Looking at Baccalaureate Nursing Education and Practices

Abstract

A SABBATICAL LEAVE can mean many things: time to look more closely at engrossing problems, to carry out needed research, time lo travel to broaden one's outlook, time to reflect. A sabbatical promises all of these things and yields some of them. The focus of this sabbatical leave was a study* which centred on the question of possible reasons for the relatively limited impact of baccalaureate nursing education on the whole pattern of patient care. Graduates of generic nursing education programmes have been on the scene in Canada for some years yet the percentage of these nurses in active practice is still well below the 25 per cent goal; and the number in direct patient care much lower. Generic nursing education has been built around the concept of patient-centred care, yet much of the nursing practiced in our hospitals is still task-oriented, or functional nursing. Prodding and pushing for answers to the preceding questions is the spectre of the cost of university education. Nursing is one of the more expensive programmes in the university and the time is swiftly coming when the product must give greater evidence of value to justify the expenditure. If the baccalaureate nurse is to be prepared to function in a leadership role, and this appears to be the current thinking, then her basic educational preparation must include the development of the necessary skills in a broader sense than is currently the case. Since her reason for being is then different from that of the non-baccalaureate nurse her preparation must be different; and her practice upon graduation must offer the opportunity to reflect that difference.