There is an acute nursing shortage right now. Sinclair’s cost effective 2 year RN program has a huge waiting list. They can’t graduate RN’s fast enough. So, now that they’ve gouged the people of Montgomery County with their levy renewal again [1] (a levy that the hospitals don’t have to pay- since they are “non-profit”) – they are using your tax dollars to make a new program that will compete with existing programs at Wright State and Miami University, to give already registered RN’s a BSN.
Note- right now, the only reason to get a BSN is because your employer is asking for one- as a 2 yr RN- you can get a job ANYWHERE and get paid premium dollars.
This will subtract resources from the already stretched to capacity Sinclair RN program. Instead of expanding it, cutting wait times, and increasing graduation rates, Dr. Steve Johnson is kissing the hospitals CEO’s asses providing cheaper alternatives for them to help their accreditation status, because, there isn’t a patient out there checking to see if the person changing their bedpan, or giving them a shot has a BSN instead of an RN.
From the press release posing as a news article in the Dayton Daily snooze:
Current registered nurses will be able to get a bachelor of science in nursing degree (BSN) from Sinclair Community College for the first time in the college’s history when a new completion program begins in January 2024.
Sinclair officials said the program will help fill a shortage of nurses in the Dayton region and will help students get a critical education at a lower cost. The new program is for people who already have a registered nursing license and want to further their training.
“We are so excited to work with our healthcare providers to make sure that this critical workforce need is filled to the best of our ability,” Steve Johnson, president of Sinclair, said.
Premier Health chief nursing officer and chief experience officer Lisa Gossett said the hospital hires registered nurses with both associate degrees and bachelor degrees, but offers programs for current nurses to continue their education.
Source: Sinclair Community College is adding a Bachelor of Science in Nursing program [2]
Your taxes are subsidizing Premier Health with this program- nothing else.
Someone needs to reel Dr. Johnson in on this, pronto asap.
The citizens of Montgomery County already pay enough for Sinclair- and their health care.
You’re oversimplifying this issue. There’s a nursing shortage because it’s a tough time to be nurse and college is inherently expensive in the US.
Even though many of nurses have BSNs and make reasonably high wages, they are often put in compromising situations which can cause them to lose their nursing license and burnout. Hospitals want to be Magnet-designated, which requires most (if not all) of nurses working at the hospital to have a BSN. The median debt of a WSU BSN graduate in 2022 is $23,500. Who wants to go to college for 4 years accumulating debt, only to have an unreasonably difficult job? Yes, it will be a well-paying job but most hospitals are not unionized and there is limited federal and state regulation protecting nurses from unsafe patient-to-nurse ratios. Ohio isn’t exactly California, so hospital/insurance lobbying will continue to limit federal/state patient-to-nurse ratios.
Personally, I’m more than willing to subsidize Sinclair’s development if it affords nurses the ability to gain more education and limits their burden of debt to do so. Everybody wins if 1) nurses are well-educated and 2) can do their job in a timely manner.
HI Caleb-
There are a ton of options for online BSN programs for working RN’s.
Having Sinclair compete with WSU- while siphoning off resources from it’s 2yr RN program is BUNK.
And, if you have a 2yr degree and are working at Premier- and they tell you to get a BSN- they pay for it. If they tell you they’ll fire you if you don’t get it- they will have a hard time replacing you.
This is corporate welfare. Nothing else.
I wondered about this. When I read the headline, I thought, great, this will create more nurses. Then when I read the story I saw that was not true, only taking existing RNs to upgrade to BSNs. What does this really do for the shortage of nurses? And it appears we will be subsidizing this program both through our taxes and health care costs, if paid by hospitals.
There has been a constant “nursing shortage” for at least the past 50 years.
The pernnial “solution” is to “make more nurses.” This strategy has failed for at least 50 years. The attrition rate from nursing has been constantly high – pre-covid it was about 20% in the first year after graduation.
People spend their time and money training to work primarily in hospital settings, then flee that work faster than new grads can take their place, at the same time demand for the work steadily climbs. That should be a red flag that there is something consistently and terribly WRONG in those workplaces.
The education required for nurses to qualify to take the licensing exam, which is what qualifies them to be “Registered Nurses,” is all covered in a two-year associates degree.
Requiring a bachelor’s degree in nursing for employment in hospitals is something the hospital industry and the nursing credentialing/academic industry have jointly chosen to promote, claiming it provides “superior outcomes.” (IMHO the data cited for this is weak)
University of Dayton also has a BSN program. https://udayton.edu/education/departments_and_programs/hss/programs/undergraduate/nursing/index.php
I’m a 2 year diploma RN with 12 years of post secondary education outside of nursing, including graduate work in medical sciences. I passed the NCLEX the first time I took it. I’ve worked in a variety of ICU settings as a staff nurse, charge nurse and preceptor, and I passed the CCRN exam the first time I took it, too.
I can assure you that adding a BSN to the alphabet soup behind my name would do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to make me a more knowledgeable nurse, improve my patient’s outcomes or make my practice “safer”. It’s already safe. Unfortunately, I have a high level of expertise in a profession that continually tells me that my preparation is somehow “inferior”. Nursing needs to get over itself.