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EDITOR'S PAGE
Dan O'Connor
Back to School
Many hospitals are forcing their RNs to enroll in bachelor's programs.
he's been working in one of the nation's busiest operating
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rooms and biggest university hospitals for more than 30 years.
She's been promoted to a top OR management position. But
she'll be out of a job in 2 years unless she enrolls in a program to ger
her bachelor's degree in nursing.
It's not that the RN she earned when she graduated from nursing
school in the late '70s will expire, or that she no longer receives exceptional evaluations.
It's just that her hospital, like a growing number around the country
swayed by studies linking better-educated nurses to better patient
care, now requires that its nurses in leadership positions have at least
a bachelor's degree in nursing.
A diploma is nice. A degree is better — so long as it's a bachelor's,
not an associate's. Really?
"All of a sudden I can't do the job I've been doing for more than 30
years because I don't have a degree?" asks our non-baccalaureate
nurse, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
At this point in her life and career, she has no intention of enrolling in
an RN-to-BSN program. In her 50s, she'd rather take an early retirement
from the 12-hour days and responsibility for close to 30 ORs at the university hospital, and then seek out a staff nursing position at a hospital
that's more interested in her skills and experience than in her degrees.
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O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | D E C E M B E R 2012