Abstract
In Germany, nursing science has been developing since the early 1990s. Since then it is possible for nursing professionals (partly with, partly without prior 3-year vocational training) to do a bachelor's or master's degree in nursing science at universities of applied sciences. However, to do a Ph.D. they need to change to a university as in Germany only universities hold the right to award doctorates. But German universities have almost no faculties for nursing science so that the doctorate unavoidably needs to be done at the faculties for educational science, sociology or psychology, and usually students will achieve the title Doctor of Philosophy. With nursing professionals in the U.S., the situation is completely different: Their occupational biographies show that they have deliberately decided to do their PhD in adult education and not in nursing science. In this paper, as a first step the situation regarding the education system in Germany and the U.S. will be compared. Then the results of the analysis of the occupational biographical decisions will be presented. The concluding discussion will deal with the question what does the result of the analysis means for the German education system, respectively, nursing science in Germany.
Highlights
When thinking about the academization of nursing, people in Europe, in particular in Germany, always take a look at the United States as well: One of the reasons is the early start the professionalization of nursing had in the United States
The proportion of the qualification levels achieved by nursing professionals in both countries differ widely: While the United States saw a decline in the number of nursing professionals without a university degree throughout the past decades, Germany is struggling to achieve an academization rate of 10 percent
The phenomenon of "lifelong learning" is - at least in Germany - very much promoted by education policy, resulting in the fact that empirical studies in Germany show that the term lifelong learningis an "absolute metaphor" [1], meaning that the term is used to show how learning should take place
Summary
When thinking about the academization of nursing, people in Europe, in particular in Germany, always take a look at the United States as well: One of the reasons is the early start the professionalization of nursing had in the United States. Another survey among all graduates of nursing science programs in another Federal State showed the following result: "Direct care as a future field of activity for academically trained nursing professionals is hardly or not at all considered by the respondents They attach little attention to aspects of basic care as a field for the expansion of the job profile" [3], translation: A.S.) at this point we cannot claim that the academization of nursing was completed in Germany; at most we may speak of academic training for positions that involve teaching and managing. From this type of academization we seem to see only an indirect benefit to the qualification levels of those involved in direct bedside care - via the academically trained teaching and managing staff
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