Hilary K. Mauch, RN
Grand Canyon University
December 2, 2012
Competencies between Levels of Nursing Recently new legislatures are being proposed to states House of Delegates requiring nurses to obtain their BSN degree within 10 years of graduation from an ADN program. A recent article by Robert J. Rossester, Creating a More Highly Qualified Nursing Workforce, where he presented facts that nurses with a BSN degree are better qualified as nurses, even though and ADN nurse sit for the same NCLEX-RN exam. However the NCLEX-RN exam was only created to demonstrate a new graduate nurse was competent to provide safe minimal patient care. It has been argued that the only thing different between an ADN and a BSN, is that BSN contain “nursing theory”. For the purpose of this paper, the history, competency of each nursing program will be explored and the different practice of nursing care for an ICU patient.
The BSN was said to be first created in 1899 by Mary Adelaide Nutting and Isabel Stewart. (Creasia and Friberg, 2011) They wanted to broaden the diploma nursing by adding additional classes like, administration, education and public health nursing (Creasisa and Friberg, 2011) Originally the idea of a baccalaureate program did not succeed very well due to the cost and lack of social awareness. Later in 1930, Annie Goodrich, created a program that would create nurses to become professionals by including the concepts of acute illness, psychosocial care and public health (Creasia and Friberg, 2011). In the article, The Impact of Education on Nursing Practice, by Robert J. Rosseter, describes today’s BSN as having the same material as an ADN but “with a more in depth treatment of the physical and social sciences, nursing research, public and community health, nurse management, and humanities. The additional course work enhances the student’s professional development, prepares the new nurse