Re: David Oliver: Why shouldn’t nurses be graduates?
Following Dr Copeman's response
I didn't really intend my column or the responses below the line to become a doctrinal debate about research methodologies and the weight and validity of different approaches.
However, I have cited in the original column a pragmatic study carried out with some rigour by a reputable research team with a strong track record in their field.
Attempting a cohort study would, as Dr Copeman doubtless realises, be subject to all manner of confounding variables and would also take years to arrive at a conclusion. And even if the results showed somehow that non-graduate nurses were just as capable, safe and effective as graduates, it wouldnt make any difference to the proposition of my column - namely, that there is nothing wrong with nurses having degrees and that it's ludicrous to claim that uniquely among healthcare professions, nurses are somehow damaged by university education nor that nursing requires a knowledge base and research underpinnings as surely as do professions allied to medicine.
Now, where I do agree is that if we want to do all we can to attract people into healthcare professions, and to retain them, it is important to do all we can to facilitate wider routes of entry and encourage a more diverse base of applicants for training and to allow some people to accumulate their qualifications via a "skills escalator".
In addition, the UK government's decision to cut nursing bursaries and repeatedly to suppress evidence based safe staffing guidance, to go through with Brexit and to impose pay freezes on NHS professions over a number of years and to underfund the NHS has led to major crises of morale in the nursing workforce and worsened workforce gaps. None of that has anything to do with degrees.
Rapid Response:
Re: David Oliver: Why shouldn’t nurses be graduates?
Following Dr Copeman's response
I didn't really intend my column or the responses below the line to become a doctrinal debate about research methodologies and the weight and validity of different approaches.
However, I have cited in the original column a pragmatic study carried out with some rigour by a reputable research team with a strong track record in their field.
Attempting a cohort study would, as Dr Copeman doubtless realises, be subject to all manner of confounding variables and would also take years to arrive at a conclusion. And even if the results showed somehow that non-graduate nurses were just as capable, safe and effective as graduates, it wouldnt make any difference to the proposition of my column - namely, that there is nothing wrong with nurses having degrees and that it's ludicrous to claim that uniquely among healthcare professions, nurses are somehow damaged by university education nor that nursing requires a knowledge base and research underpinnings as surely as do professions allied to medicine.
Now, where I do agree is that if we want to do all we can to attract people into healthcare professions, and to retain them, it is important to do all we can to facilitate wider routes of entry and encourage a more diverse base of applicants for training and to allow some people to accumulate their qualifications via a "skills escalator".
In addition, the UK government's decision to cut nursing bursaries and repeatedly to suppress evidence based safe staffing guidance, to go through with Brexit and to impose pay freezes on NHS professions over a number of years and to underfund the NHS has led to major crises of morale in the nursing workforce and worsened workforce gaps. None of that has anything to do with degrees.
David
Competing interests: No competing interests