Dive Brief:
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There are more registered nurses with nursing bachelor’s degrees, but still not enough to reach a 2020 goal for acute care, according to a Journal of Nursing Scholarship report.
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The report found that 57% of registered nurses in an acute care setting have nursing bachelor’s degrees, but that’s well below the 80% goal by 2020. However, it is an improvement from 44% in 2004.
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Since the Institute of Medicine’s 2010 Future of Nursing report set the 80% goal, the percentage increased 1.9% each year, compared to an average of 1.3% in the years preceding 2010.
Dive Insight:
The push for more bachelor's degree-educated acute care nurses comes from the belief that nurses with more degrees offer a higher quality of care with lower mortality rates and better outcomes.
With its Future of Nursing Report in 2010, the Institute of Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation offered an “action-oriented blueprint for the future of nursing.” The 2010 report said nurses should play a “fundamental role” in transforming healthcare.
The four key messages were:
- Nurses should practice to the full extent of their education and training.
- Nurses should achieve higher levels of education and training through an improved education system that promotes seamless academic progression.
- Nurses should be full partners, with physicians and other healthcare professionals, in redesigning health care in the United States.
- Effective workforce planning and policy making require better data collection and information infrastructure.
Seven years after that report, researchers, including Dr. Chenjuan Ma at New York University’s Rory Meyers College of Nursing, reviewed how the industry did regarding college education between 2004 and 2013. They reviewed 2,126 units in 377 U.S. acute care hospitals.
They wrote there has been a “significant increase” in the proportion of RNs with bachelor’s degrees in acute care hospitals. The percentage of units with at least 80% of nurses with a baccalaureate degree or higher increased from 3% in 2009 to 7% in 2013. Even so, the pace isn’t brisk enough to reach the 80% goal.
“Based on the current trends, 64% of the nurses working in a hospital unit will have a baccalaureate degree by 2020, and 22% of the units will reach the 80% goal by 2020,” researchers said.
They wrote that the U.S. nursing workforce is “under educational transformation” in hopes of meeting healthcare needs. To meet those needs, the researchers recommended "further advocacy, commitment, and investment" from all healthcare stakeholders.