Tuesday 20 May 2008

All Degree Profession?

I've been questioning the viability of destroying the diploma option and turning nursing in the UK into an all degree profession.
EH? The drop-out rates are sky high already. We would be depriving patients of good nurses that could honestly NOT survive the course as it stands.
I say this because I'll be one of those not graduating with a degree. I don't think it changes the levels of patient care. I can still be a competent nurse working with the latest research without having to write 5,000 words on something I cannot comprehend.
I dinna ken the reasoning behind this. They say they want a profession and that means university degrees.
Does not compute... According to the Guardian 83% of nursing students take the diploma option. So how would this do what the RCN says and increase the intake? Making it a degree is not going to somehow encourage students from other subjects to choose nursing instead, if that's what they're thinking. To squeeze out the weaker academically is sometimes to squeeze out those who perform best with the patients.
Knowing the difference between qualitative and quantitative isn't gonna help me when a patient looks at me and asks when they are going to die.

3 comments:

Faith Walker said...

I think there may be some debate- at least on the RCN discussion forums as to weather it will be an all graduate profession eg. everyone must have a degree (not neccessarily in nursing) or a all nursing graduate profession (everyone has a degree in nursing).

I chose a diplona because I already have a degree! I don't want another one.

Anyway, the diploma is not any easier than the degree- the courses are the same! The only difference is that the diploma is the first two years of the degree spread over 3 years.

WardBunny said...

Our diploma and degree courses are the same length (3 years) but the amount of work in the last year is much higher for the degree. They have 5 essays where we have 1.

I think you're right. The debate is coming. I'm ready to wage war!

Unknown said...

Hi wardbunny, I really like your blog!
I'm a student nurse in Australia and I totally agree with what you. I am at uni getting my degree in nursing. The nursing situation in Australia is terrible, to become a registered nurse here means you have to go to uni. But at uni we get very little prac and then graduate as registered nurses who have no idea what we are doing on the wards.

Making nursing a degree is not the way to go or if it must be done incorporating lots of prac placement!!! Hopefully people will learn from Australia's mistakes!

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