<p>Has anyone else heard/read/become aware of a possible trend in phasing out the Nurse Practitioner masters degree and phasing in a Doctorate of Nursing Practice? I have read about this on a couple of college sites. </p>
<p>This is worrisome to us because D has planned to return to school, after earning her B.S.N. and working for a couple of years, to become a Nurse Practitioner. </p>
<p>I have also read about the Advanced Nursing Practice masters degree and am not sure if this would be taking the place of a Nurse Practitioner degree.</p>
<p>Any help or information would be appreciated and helpful - thank you.</p>
<p>The American Association of Nursing Colleges, along with a number of other top-level Nursing Organizations, has been spearheading a movement (dating back to the early 2000’s/late 1990’s) to require a DNP degree in order to be eligible to take the National NP certification exam (required to be licensed as an NP). The target date for this is 2015. In response to this a number of Nursing Programs have eliminated, or are in the process of eliminating, offering the MSN-NP degree. There remains a major debate in the Nursing Community about this, which has unfortunately divided Nursing into two camps, each having their own perspectives as to whether this should be done or not. At least at the present time, as far as I am aware of, the National NP certifying bodies have not announced any plans to actually implement this change. There are many pros and cons to making this change, our D wrote a 20 page research paper on this topic in one of her Grad School courses, so I can’t report on all these here. Most of my Associates in the Nursing Community are of the perception that the implementation of this change, if it ever occurs, will probably be a number of years after 2015. But we shall see.</p>
<p>The term Advanced Practice Nurse is used to designate a Nurse who has obtained a Nursing degree at a post BSN advanced level (Masters Degree or above) in a Nursing Clinical Practice area (Nurse Practitioner, Nurse Anesthetist, Nurse Mid-Wife, etc.). Nurses can also obtain MSN degrees in other areas of Nursing that are not specifically clinical practice in nature (but would not meet the eligibility requirements to take the National NP certification exam). Hope this info is helpful.</p>
<p>Thank you, Mwallenmd, for your thorough response. We appreciate the information very much. It’s a little worrisome. Very interesting that your D wrote a paper on the topic. I can understand how this would be a divisive topic in the nursing field. I guess we will have to take a wait-and-see approach to this. Again, thank you for responding to our questions.</p>
<p>Who/what is The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) and why would they be interested in promoting a DNP degree? Looks to me as though they are interested in producing more profits for their membership as opposed to “fixing” something that is not broken. JMPO… </p>