Baccalaureate nursing education and surgical patient outcomes

¶ … Baccalaureate Nursing Students Better?

Being a nurse in the twenty first century has become more complex and demanding than in preceding decades. With the advent of greater technology the nursing community requires an immediate infusion of interest with respect to the training and education nurses receive in order to meet the challenges of the new healthcare millennium. The focus of this report is on an article authored by Aiken, et al. (2003) wherein the authors address the issue of nursing education and patient outcome effectiveness. No only did the authors very clearly present to the reader a well-defined study purpose (i.e., surgical patient risk adjustment mortality and failure to rescue and level of nurse education) their investigative conclusions clearly emphasize the positive influence of nurse education on medical consumer surgical healthcare wellness. According to the authors improved patient surgical outcomes are better when direct care RNs are trained at the baccalaureate level, or above, and when the medical facility has a higher number of BSN nurses over non-BSN nurses. What is interesting as well is the authors' conclusion that RN experience is not a profitable predictor of patient mortality or failure to rescue, indicating that the long held idea that years of experience is more important than level of education is incorrect.