Nearly 18 months after the release of the Institute
of Medicine (IOM) report ‘‘The Future of Nursing:
Leading Change, Advancing Health,’’ it makes sense
to ask: what changes are occurring? how can we
make the most difference? and where can the report’s
recommendations take us toward improving patient
care?
One of the report’s focal points, and a priority for
the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is ensuring
that nurses are educated and trained to excel as 21st
century health care delivery becomes more complex
and extends beyond acute care settings. The Future
of Nursing report emphasizes that if nurses are to
maintain their effectiveness in providing highquality
patient care, they will need to be better
prepared. Specifically, the report recommends
creating a system that produces more nurses educated
at the bachelor of science (BSN) level and policies that
allow nurses to transition seamlessly from an associate’s
degree to the BSN or a higher degree. From
the perspective of the IOM committee that developed
the report, increasing the percentage of the workforce
holding a BSN to 80% by 2020 is both an achievable
goal and a necessary step to meet workforce competency
and capacity requirements.1
As a physician, I have seen the tremendous capabilities
of nurses—capabilities that are essential to
meeting patient needs. But to ensure that they maximize
their contributions to health and health care,
nurses will need advanced skills and expertise in care
management, interdisciplinary teamwork, problem
solving, and more. This makes higher levels of education
imperative. In addition, having a larger pool of
highly educated nurses will be necessary to expand
the ranks of nurse faculty, addressing the shortfall
that now causes nursing schools to turn away thousands of qualified applicants each year. These
advanced degree nurses are also needed to help ameliorate
the worsening primary care shortage.
For numerous reasons, employers will benefit from
advancing levels of nurse education as well. For one,
the advent of value-based payment systems will place
an even greater imperative on having a highly trained
health care workforce. As payers increasingly focus
on hospital readmission rates, nurse-sensitive quality
measures, and care coordination, nurses’ performance
will be even more critical to the bottom line.
More BSN-prepared nurses will mean a bigger cadre
of nurses prepared to fully participate in interdisciplinary
care teams and to take on leadership roles at
the staff and executive levels in a transformed health
care system.
In a recent survey conducted by AONE,2 51% of
nurse leaders said their organizations preferentially
hire BSN nurses, although just 32% pay BSN nurses
more at the time of hire. Lack of access to BSN
nurses and lack of support from organizational
leaders were cited as the top barriers to such policies.
Ninety-three percent of survey respondents noted that
their institutions offer tuition benefits to support associate’s
degree-to-BSN advancement.
Some of the leading nurse employers favor
advanced degree nurses. The well-respected Johns
Hopkins Hospital has a stated preference for hiring
BSN nurses and requires nurses to obtain at least
a BSN before going beyond a certain point on the
career ladder. The for-profit Tenet Health Care
Corporation has adopted similar policies, and the
Veteran’s Health Administration also links education
to career advancement.