The healthcare industry is continually evolving, and nurses play an essential role in its development. Their extensive knowledge and skills become the building blocks of all healthcare centers and provide emotional support to patients like no other staff member. Their determination and zealous approach towards holistic healing and quality healthcare help bring a positive change in the hospital environment. Nurses play a significant role in improving health outcomes and giving their patients the utmost satisfaction during their visit or stay at the hospital.
Nurses utilize every possible opportunity to enhance their skills and increase their knowledge to improve patients’ outcomes. Going for advanced and higher education is an imperative way to do so. The educational prospects for nurses are never-ending, and they can make the optimal choices by going from RN to BSN or BSN to MSN or MSN to DNP. Higher education helps them in their personal growth and career advancements. It is a valuable factor behind the overall improvement in the healthcare industry. Let’s look at some reasons why nurses need higher education now more than ever:
Nursing Shortage
Ever since the spread of the contagious COVID-19, the world has been in dire need of professionals committed to helping people fight off these unidentified diseases. There are new and upcoming programs in the medical field that emphasize a practical understanding of medical students regarding medicinal theories. Recent events led to an alarming nursing shortage across the globe, and we saw RN to BSN Programs Increase in Texas to bridge the gap. It was a way to overcome the shortage problem in the Texas healthcare sector, among many other reasons. Regular nurses understood their needs at the upper management level. They pursued bachelor’s degrees to equip them with the right expertise. A BSN program helps them work with the fast-paced healthcare industry and acquire leadership skills that make everyday hospital operations efficient and effective.
Better Patient Care
The healthcare industry’s main and most pressing concern is to improve patient care. All the professionals in this industry are innovating new ways to cater to it. Nurses need to become advanced with time, and higher education helps them. With a better degree, they will be able to anticipate the upcoming threats to human health and address various health needs of their patients. They will provide better patient care and use holistic approaches to fit their patients physically and mentally with more education. Nurses need to learn how to help make the hospital experience satisfactory for their patients and positively change their lives. With advanced education, they will become better aware of the health disparities and bring about effective initiatives to eradicate inequality in healthcare.
More Specific Specialization Needs
As the world evolves into a better version of itself, people realize the significance of making workplace operations more efficient than ever. Nurses with higher education can definitively aid it by making everyday hospital operations well-organized, systematic, and structured. Higher education helps them become experts in a specific field and gives them specialized skills valuable in increasing workplace productivity. Registered nurses with a Bachelor of Sciences in Nursing can join various positions with competency and adeptness. They can perform leadership roles, work in pharmaceuticals, insurance companies, or healthcare IT, and work as case managers, health educators, or home health nurses. A master’s program would further define their worth in specialized fields such as pediatric nurses, clinical researchers, forensic nurses, and professors at medical schools.
More Requirement for Leadership Skills
Nursing education helps medical students acquire the much-in-demand leadership skills the hour needs. We are amidst a pandemic, and there is an evident shortage of medical experts and leaders who can guide us out of it efficiently. Nurses with leadership skills can perform roles beyond regular nurses’ capacity, gaining these abilities through advanced education. As a nurse, it is essential to have practical communication skills to educate patients efficiently and their families. A bachelor’s or master’s degree, or a doctorate program, will help them participate in awareness campaigns. It makes them competent enough to become a part of a decision-makers group to present innovative ideas for improvement. It helps them become more self-aware and work towards personal growth, ultimately bringing a positive change in patients dependent upon them.
More Opportunities to Help Patients
Higher education helps nurses become more advanced in their knowledge and understanding. They get to explore unidentified diseases and conduct research on ways to deal with surging health issues in the community. With new and updated information, they get more opportunities to help patients around them, particularly by becoming more aware of self-care. Nurses who study medical illnesses and their treatments better educate patients regarding their medicinal needs and health plans. When a new disease emerges, patients often feel too scared to handle it independently, and a panicky situation arises in the community. Nurses can help them understand it better and remove them from their emotional or physical distress little by little. Sometimes, these patients undergo rapidly changing symptoms and find it difficult to pinpoint their health issues. Educated nurses can help diagnose these diseases, and licensed practitioners prescribe essential medications. Today, as we deal with numerous conditions known and unknown, these nursing abilities could be precious in improving health services.
Increasing Demand for Advanced Nurses
Numerous studies suggest that the number of new nurses and physicians in primary care is lower than retiring. It creates an unimaginable gap in the healthcare system, which is evident in the rural areas where educational prospects are limited. It creates a dire situation where nurse practitioners, who can flexibly travel from place to place, are more in demand than physicians and specialized doctors. Higher education is a necessitating factor here because it guarantees that nurses are aware of their role in the patient’s primary care. They understand the significance of patient-centric care and can make favorable decisions for uneducated and unaware patients. These nurses can also participate in policy-making and reform outdated regulations to improve care provision in rural areas. Since higher education allows them to practice their skills and competencies to the full extent, they can positively impact the community.
Conclusion
Conclusively, why nurses need higher education has its answer in today’s world health situation. We see the emergence of numerous diseases and viruses, many of which are yet to be studied and identified. Higher nursing education will help nurses gain valuable insight on these and help patients become better aware of their surroundings, and improve patient care. With advanced education, they will acquire more skills conducive to assisting patients in living a healthier life and walking on the correct path to self-growth.
