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 Houston Nursing Conference Stirs Debate on Nursing Education

NURSING FORUM DIVIDED ON EDUCATION STANDARD
The long-running debate about whether registered nurses should be required to have more than an associate's degree punctuated the discussion in Houston on Monday during a national forum on the profession's future.  More than half the nation's nurses earn associate's degrees before starting their careers. But some think the starting line should be bachelor's degrees. It's a sore point at a time when experts are predicting a significant national shortage of nurses.

Last year, the Institute of Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation convened nursing and health care leaders to begin a two-year Initiative on the Future of Nursing. The group's report is scheduled for release in October, said committee chair Donna Shalala, University of Miami president and former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. More than 300 students, hospital nurses, nurse educators and others packed a conference auditorium at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston -- the initiative's largest crowd for its third and final national forum. A recent study from The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching concluded that the minimum education required for entering nursing should be the bachelor's degree. The article is in the Houston Chronicle.

SERVING WHILE LEARNING
If you have a child in high school, chances are you’ll be hearing something about civic engagement or outreach or service learning. Maybe your child will participate in a community clean-up day, or spend 30 hours over the course of a semester helping out at a local shelter. Most likely, your child will get to choose how she gets involved in the community. And if you’re lucky, the project will be tied to the curriculum, so your child will have a chance to reflect and think about how that volunteer work relates to her own life—and more specifically, to her life as a learner. Tom Ehrlich, a senior scholar at the Carnegie Foundation who co-directs the foundation’s Political Engagement Project, says the concept of civic engagement in higher education—using the classroom as a starting point for engaging students in national and local affairs—has been steadily growing on university campuses since the 1980s. The article is at Education.com.