Should the Entry Into Nursing Practice Be the Baccalaureate Degree?

Abstract

ing rapidly. Because of advances in medicine, technology, and lifesaving techniques, patients now have a better chance of surviving traumatic injury, life-threatening disease processes, and delicate surgical procedures than ever before. As a result, patients are living longer than ever expected, and health care providers need the ability to think critically and provide health care services at levels never before imagined. Nursing is no exception. To ensure that the nursing profession does not fall behind during these rapid changes, nurses must look at the level from which they practice. To meet the increasing complexity of patient needs, the nursing profession must increase nurses’ educational requirements by requiring the baccalaureate degree as the entry into practice. In 1965, the American Nurses Association (ANA) took a bold stance by publishing a position paper calling for a baccalaureate degree to be the minimum level of education for entry into practice. By taking this initiative, the ANA was attempting to move nursing education away from the hospitalbased, diploma programs of the day into colleges and universities, thus changing the education of nurses from an apprenticeship to a science-based practice. Why, then, more than 40 years later, are nurses still debating this issue?