CONTACT - Volume 8, Number 2
Message from the Dean

It's neither new nor good news. Nursing enrollments at the baccalaureate level are decreasing nationwide, while at the same time the need for more baccalaureate nurses is becoming ever more pressing. Numerous suggestions have been made to bring these two opposing factors together. Short and long term corrections, changes, and remedies are being employed. Each of you is probably abiding with the problem and is hopefully contributing to the solution. While this news is becoming almost boring, some of us are becoming genuinely concerned with the very survival of professional nursing. Is there a future for the baccalaureate and higher degree nurse, and if so, what is it?

What if, to survive, we made a radical change in professional nursing rather than incremental patching? What if we "blew the whole thing up" and created an entirely new model? What if we proposed that entry to professional practice become the six-year Nurse Doctorate (ND) instead of the baccalaureate degree?

Whoa, you say! How could that possibly work? We already have a shortage; lengthening the program would mean fewer new nurses. We haven't even been able to raise the entry level to the BSN degree. What would this graduate do? How would any agency be able to afford this new nurse? Where would we find more doctorally prepared faculty? What would happen to small nursing schools? This could never work.

Before you decide that incremental is better than radical, pause, think critically, analyze, and evaluate. This very radical concept being discussed by nursing education leaders today was successfully implemented by the pharmacy profession. They had many of the same problems as nursing including declining enrollments and increasing need. By raising the entry level to the six-year doctorate in pharmacy (PharmD) they have added prestige to their profession, have an increasing enrollment, and are seeing a decreasing shortage. How did it happen? Very carefully but not over cautiously, and with unity among the educators against expected opposition, lawsuits, and internal professional divisions. Is it applicable to nursing? No one knows - yet.

But, about all things pertaining to professional nursing, keep an open mind. It's a trait we expected during your nursing education. Don't stop thinking critically now that you are no longer a student. Don't let a good idea slip out of our hands for want of careful analysis. Perfect solutions don't always seem so at first. This may be the one - or not.

Judith Balcerski, Ph.D., RN