I sat and pondered over this story in the AM this morning. The jest of this...if you haven't figured that out over the past decade....there's a national shortage of nurses. So the university folks have finally decided....enough is enough.
The old two-year program? Kinda pushed to the side, and some type of 12-month program now to be engaged.What do you end up with? I sat and speculated over this. In the Air Force/Navy scheme....yeah, they would have the program wrapped up in less than a year. Qualified as a 'normal' nurse? Probably, but there's more intense pressure on the person to reach the end-result.
But this led me to ask the question....if this 12-month program makes sense....won't the idiots eventually reach the level of thinking....lets compact this one more time and 'getter-done' with six months? So you'd end up nurses that know about eight pages of real information for situations.
It's a funny discussion. A hundred years ago....1924....you went as a uneducated person (usually a gal) to some clinic....getting marginal training, and your nurse talents were mostly in holding down unhappy patients, wrapping up patients, or pushing a 300-lb guy in a wheel-chair to the lobby.
Yeah, we've raised our expectations a bit in the past hundred years.
My own suggestion here....have up a nurse class or two for ninth-grade level, repeating in the 10th, 11th and 12th grade. Have a 90-day program after high-school (free of charge) and have a direct job path all geared up.