October 2007      Back to Directory

Editor’s Corner, October 2007

Hi everyone!

October ushered in a few unexpected surprises...

As I write these words, a 600-sq-mile area in Southern California is burning and hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes. One can't help but pray for their safety and well-being.

Another nasty development: the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage sector continues to have its ripple effect throughout the economy and lower market expectations.

Yet, despite all the ups and downs in the economy and despite all "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," one thing is constant -- the demand for nurses continues to be strong all across the country. That has not changed in October.

If you have chosen nursing as a profession to help others and make our world a better place to live, this is a good time to be a nurse. A quick visit to our web site NurseRecruiter.com will convince you of the fact.

Three important announcements:

1) All Allied Health professionals can now search from thousands of jobs posted in a variety of Allied Health positions on our web site NurseRecruiter.com

2) We offer the best DIVERSE job opportunities available in the healthcare sector today, and NOT just travel nurse positions.

We have thousands of open positions offered by:

Click Here to register to be contacted by any of our subscribing employers

3) It's still not too late to win a fabulous CRUISE GETAWAY FOR TWO!

Click Here to register by December 31st, 2007 and participate in Jan 3, 2008 drawing. The lucky winner will have a great all-expenses paid vacation for two in BAHAMAS or MEXICO to start the new year right.

Visit our FREE GETAWAY FOR TWO page for details.

Have a safe November.

Best regards.

Ugur Akinci, Ph.D.

Editor

Headline Nursing News

Filipino Nurses Flock to U.S. in Record Numbers

The number of Filipino nurses migrating to the United States for better paying and more challenging jobs has increased by 50 percent, according to the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP).

The situation is described by some sources as the creation of a "medical diaspora" in the United States.

In the first nine months of 2007, 15,083 Philippine-educated nurses migrated to the United States and took the US National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) eligibility test NCLEX to advance their careers. That represents an increase of 47% over the first nine months of 2006.

An ever-increasing number of Filipinos are applying to nursing schools back at home to earn their nursing degrees.

As of June 2007, a total of 632,108 students were enrolled in more than 400 nursing schools in Philippines, representing a net increase of 145,875 students (or 30 percent) over the 486,233 students enrolled in 2006.

The number of American baby-boomers, i.e., those born during the fifties and are now entering their 60s, is approaching 80 million, or almost 26% of the U.S. population. Currently every 100,000 Americans make 4,300 doctor appointments in a year.

Given such numbers, it's likely that both the domestic nurse shortage and the nurse influx from abroad will continue.

Raytown, KS Nurse is "Outstanding Woman Leader of the Year"

Registered Nurse Linda Hokenson of Raytown, Kansas, 57, is one tireless community worker. Besides overseeing the nursing services of four different schools, she also manages to serve in the following capacities, as reported by the daily Kansas City Star:

"She works as a hospice nurse; is president of the mother's council of a Boy Scout troop; teaches Sunday School, plays the piano and sings in her church choir; serves on the board of the Shepherd Center, and volunteers for the Metropolitan Lutheran Ministries and other non-profit civic and political groups."

How does she manage to find the time to eat or sleep is a mystery to this writer.

Is it a wonder that she was honored as the "Outstanding Woman Leader of the Year" by "Raytown Women of Today"?

We salute RN Hokenson for her selfless service to her community!

Three Canadian Nursing Programs Earn CASN's 7-Year Accreditation

Three Canadian colleges received the Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing (CASN)'s highly-coveted 7-year nurse education accreditation: McMaster University and Mohawk College in Hamilton, and Kitchener's Conestoga College. The recognition is the highest bestowed by CASN on any university-level nursing program.

This will relieve the nursing students of Ontario from the inconvenience of "2-plus-2" curriculum. Previously, the students used to complete two years at one college (e.g., Seneca) and then had to study two more years on another campus (i.e., York University).

Due to the accreditation, now McMaster faculty will visit the students of the other two colleges at their own campuses rather than other way around. McMaster's educational methods are held in such high esteem in the academic community that they were adopted even by the Harvard Medical School.

Each year 650 to 700 students apply for McMaster's four-year nursing program but only 100 are accepted. With this accreditation, the nursing students will be free to study in any of these three schools. However, at the end of the four years they will all receive that prestigious McMaster diploma.

Online BSN Program in Wisconsin Ideal for Busy Nurses

A new Bachelor of Science program in Wisconsin is getting rave reviews from nurses who are too busy to get their BSN degrees in any other way.

Thanks to the program aptly named BSN@Home , 550 registered nurses succeeded in earning their BSN degrees by studying online in their spare time. They might've called it the "Busy Successful Nurse" degree as well.

The program was launched back in 1996. Sharon Nellis, University of Wisconsin-Madison's School of Nursing assistant dean and the director of the state-wide distance-learning program, said the program was made possible by pooling the resources of five different UW nursing schools -- UW-Madison, UW-Milwaukee, UW-Eau Claire, UW-Green Bay and UW-Oshkosh.

School's "No Scrubs" Policy Triggers Civil Rights Complaints

When Indiana's Ebbertt Education Center's nursing program ruled that the high-school students cannot wear medical scrubs during the school hours it quickly escalated into a civil rights issue, triggering the involvement of Indiana Civil Liberties Union.

If the ROTC students could wear their uniforms, the nursing students should be able to wear their scrubs, went the pro-scrubs argument.

The nursing teacher Cynthia Perry said her students have always worn scrubs at least once a week. "I have my students start practicing wearing (the scrubs) right after Labor Day - they get a grade for it," Perry was quoted saying.

The school officials gave in and told Perry that the students could continue to wear their scrubs, even with the new policy in place.

The issue puzzled some observers who didn't approve the ban.

"I agree that scrubs are a vital part of any nursing program," a nurse commented on the Internet about the story. "The student needs to learn early on how to perform duties in scrubs, which fit and feel different than the regular attire. As a fellow nurse, I support these students in wanting to wear the scrub uniforms. They are far from inappropriate, so what is the big deal? These students are working on fulfilling a dream/goal. Who are we to stop them?"

Others, however, didn't buy that argument. Scrubs should be worn only in clinical settings and changed with normal street clothes to prevent the contamination of the environment with biohazards and contaminants, they argued.

"If these students need to "practice," they need to "practice" changing their biohazard-environment clothes to street clothes daily. How hard is that to understand?" one critic wrote.

And besides, "non-nursing program students will also start wearing scrubs to school, just to see if they can. Who is going to check? The expectation is that these high school students can be responsible for their personal appearance, as they would be held accountable in the real world," another observer pitched in.

How about you, dear reader? Scrubs or no-scrubs for high-school students in Indiana?

Is there a "Nursing Degree Inflation"?

When does a master's degree become worthy of being called a "doctorate"? And when does a doctorate mean something other than a "traditional Ph.D."?

Such questions are argued back and forth within the healthcare community these days as some university officials are facing increasing pressures to issue more doctorates than ever to nurses.

Some nursing organizations argue that the new curriculum of nursing master's program is overloaded with high-level graduate courses and thus it might as well be called a "professional doctorate" program.

Due to the technological advances in health care and the need to handle more responsibilities, today's nursing master's programs need to offer more higher-level classes and demand more from its students.

A case in point: some of the master's programs in University of Wisconsin-Madison now require more than 70 credits and take two and a half years to complete. UW requires only 32 credit hours for a normal master's degree.

"It is unfair to give a master's degree for a program that looks more like the pharmacy doctorate and the doctor of physical therapy," is how the dean of the UW-Madison Nursing School put it.

American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) is one professional organization which is pushing for more "professional doctorates" awarded to nurses. The organization claims by 2015 most advanced nurse practitioners will need these professional degrees to do their jobs properly.

However some academicians and college regents beg to differ for the following reasons:

1. The new "professional doctorate" degree (dubbed "Ph.D. Lite" by its irreverent critics) does not require any original research; but the traditional Ph.D. programs do.

2. The traditional Ph.D. takes about 12 years from the first year of college whereas "professional doctorate" takes as little as six years.

For example, Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) takes 6.5 years and replaces Master's of Physical Therapy that requires 6 years to complete. Doctor of Occupational Therapy (OTD) needs a minimum of 5.5 years of study and replaces the master's program which also takes equally long. Professional Doctorate in Pharmacy (Pharm. D.), awarded in 6 years, has replaced the 5-year Pharmacy Bachelor's program.

A June 2006 study by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools' Higher Learning Commission concluded:

"There seems to be no obvious consistency among the various degrees as to length of study; rigor, substance, or content of the program; or the ultimate utility of the degree to the person who earns it."

The NCACS finding strengthened the hands of those critics who complained how much the new "professional doctorate" programs lacked rigorous academic standards.

University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison Chancellor John Wiley went on public record with his complaint about the "credential creep" and the alleged pressure for the last 15 years "to take what is basically a master's degree and call it a doctorate."

"We are moving in the direction that everyone who sees a patient will be called 'doctor,'" Wiley added. "This is being done for reasons of professional pride."

Wiley may have a point. Indeed, a new law in California allows nurses with "professional doctorates" to call themselves "Dr." -- as long as they disclose of what.

Katharyn May, Dean of the School of Nursing at the UW, has also ackowledged the new development and said "the push has been under discussion at the national level for about five years."

Perhaps as a result of that push, UW-Madison currently offers three "clinical doctorates" in pharmacy, audiology and physical therapy. A new "Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)" degree program is reportedly also on its way.

Some observers claim that the "credential creep" started not with the nursing school but the chemistry department when students were awarded Ph.D. degrees after only 3 years of study. The doctorate is traditionally a 4-year program. But both the new trend and the rising stakes are too clear to miss.

Some university officials are concerned that such re-definition of a master's program will lower the university's academic standards and tarnish its reputation. They think the development is troublesome especially when there is a 4-year post-Master's research Ph.D. track still available to all nurses who want to go in that direction.

Many like Clark Hulse, Dean of the Graduate College at the University of Illinois at Chicago, suggest the cooperation of the professional associations, the regional accreditation organizations, and the colleges is the way to bring this contentious issue under control. "The key is to get a good conversation going," Hulse is reported saying.

There is another concern raised by some critics: a doctorate program demands top notch academic personnel and its own share of considerable resources. Thus, these new nursing degree programs might divert precious resources from bachelor and master's degree programs. And that, in turn, might put the brakes on educating undergraduate nurses at the nation's colleges at a time when the need for new nurses is at an all time high.

However, since college accreditation organizations are also supporting the new "professional doctorate" programs, the same university officials are afraid of losing students to competing educational institutions with expanding "professional doctorate" programs.

As the emergent realities of the marketplace force the healthcare professionals to acquire more robust analytical skills and get more familiar with higher levels of academic research, the chances are we'll see a lot more "professional doctorates" awarded to our hard-working nurses in the years ahead.

ABOUT NURSE-RECRUITER

Nurse-Recruiter is an online job portal. We connect staffing agencies, hospitals, and other healthcare facilities with nurses. Click Here to register to be contacted by any of our subscribing employers. To upload your resume to our database which is searched daily by healthcare recruiters nationwide, Click Here.

Job Search

You can use this form to search for jobs at Nurse-Recruiter right now!


Keyword Search: