Did you know there are bills before the state legislatures in both New Jersey and New York that would require nurses who graduate from associate degree and diploma programs to finish their BSN within ten years of graduation?

The American Nurses Association voted in 1965 (before most readers of this blog were born, I bet) to make the BSN the entry level to practice degree. But since they don’t have any legal jurisdiction, not much has changed that way. There are certainly some agencies that only employee BSN prepared nurses (Veterans Administration is one that comes to mind) and many jobs have a BSN as requirement. But associate degree programs still exist and in some states, there are still diploma programs training nurses.

What’s key here (and what gives me a little hope that it might be passed ) is that the proposed bills would not make the BSN entry level to practice. This might be a good compromise as it would still allow for community colleges to educate nurses (which is important to keeping nurse education financially accessible, especially to second career nurses) while increasing the general educational level of the profession. Stay posted for updates on the legislation!

This entry was posted on Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.