The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has approved plans to make nursing an all-graduate profession.

Why is it SO important for a nurse be have to be educated to degree level when we are supposed to be the 'caring' profession?  Nursing was never meant to be about academic qualifications, but about providing care to those that were not capable of doing everything for themselves due to illness...... you know, feeding, washing, providing conversation when time allowed, etc.  Nowadays nurses spend most of their time filling in care plans and documentation than providing basic nursing care and looking after their patients physically and mentally.  It's amazing what you can learn from talking to patients; you get insight in to their lives and experiences - such valuable stuff when dealing with people. I despair when I read about cases of malnutrition and neglegt in hospitals and nursing homes, as I'm sure many of my nursing generation do. There is NO excuse and heads should role when such cases are proven.

Of course we have Health Care Assistants now, that can do NVQs, so are they the new nurses? When there were SENs and SRNs we never had all this problem with academia. Those that were capable of studying to the higher level became SRNs, and SENs were more practically oriented. The system worked well and problems have only surfaced since Project 2000. Not everyone that wants to be a nurse has the academic ability to DO a degree for out loud! Many have young families as well. Should our profession now demand we lose the opportunity of training these willing, dare I say vocationaly-driven, people for the sake of professional recognition? Nurses have always been professionaly recognised by those that really count - the patients, and their families.

Let's get off this academic high horse of being considered 'professionaly equal to doctors' by collecting degrees and higher diplomas.  Those of us that wish to move forwards professionally can do so without having to make every single nurse go through this process if it is not really what they want; if they wish to care for people then lets train them to do so and leave it up to them how far they wish to progress. Perhaps then we wont have such a shortage of care staff and high drop out rates from nursing courses at colleges and universities. Academia is no replacement for the practical side of the caring profession!!!  I becme a nurse because I wanted to care for people, but have undertaken further academic training to achieve a position in the nursing profession that I aspired to; I started my Nurse Practitioner degree when I was 48 years old, so old dogs CAN learn new tricks after all. 

"Too many chiefs and no Indians!"