Ethical Dilemma in Admission Criteria for Nursing School - Essay Example

Ethical Dilemma in Admission Criteria for Nursing School Ethical Dilemma in Admission Criteria for Nursing School Introduction Nursing education plays a critical role in creating a cadre of highly skilled professionals with the potential to contribute to health education, business, political and social structure of a country. Nursing courses expose learners to two dominant program types: practice-oriented programs whose goal constitutes developing advanced skills and knowledge for professional practice, and theoretically oriented programs with the aim of developing scholars to generate new knowledge. Entry into schools of nursing, however, has always been characterized by widespread ethical dilemmas. A dilemma is a situation that or problem that poses two possible solutions, neither of which is practically acceptable. Dilemmas in nursing education/admission criteria are caused by diversity in students’ viewpoints, admission perspectives, and faculty requirements. Student Perspectives The dilemma concerning students’ perspective in admission into nursing schools are caused by costs, expected benefits, and the lengthy of the application process. Nursing education requires a variety of technology and equipment for study (Driscoll, Currey, Worrall-Carter & Stewart, 2008). These equipments are costly to buy and maintain. As a result, the institutions of nursing are forced to charge high fees to in order to cover the costs of buying learning equipment and paying highly specialized instructors. Students have to decide whether join or avoid the nursing school costs. Avoiding the costs may lead to short-run savings among the students, but they will miss the opportunities of reaping the long-run benefits from the nursing profession. Similarly, decision to join the college may be associated with a lot of sacrifice to meet the fees requirements. The students will be forced to do opportunity costs for several essential of life. Fees for Accelerated BSN program, for example, amounts to $8,865 per quarter while the total amount for Clinical Informatics and Patient-centered Technologies is $573 per credit (Lewis, 2011). The fees for other courses range between $550 and $700 per credit, but the fees keep on changing across time and nursing schools. Students believe that nursing courses expose them to comparatively higher paying jobs. However, students are also aware pursuing nursing courses requires extensive reading and sacrificing. Interested students may not be able to decide whether to sacrifice their life for future greater benefits or avoid the pain associated with studying and use the time to study less demanding courses while simultaneously doing other income generating activities. Additionally, the process of joining nursing colleges is lengthy and expensive since students have to pass the stipulated preliminary tests (Nordby, 2009). These increase the costs of nursing courses and pose dilemmas to prospective students as they strive to weigh the benefits of avoiding or joining nursing education. Admission Perspectives The main admission perspective is the different entry grades for various courses that characterize most of the schools of nursing. Different nursing schools need varied entry requirements; students are sometimes defeated in choosing the right courses because they do not know the exact criteria for requiring different grades in different institutions for similar courses (Magnus & Wes, 2012). This factor is the greatest contributor of dilemmas experienced when prospective nursing students are choosing proper institutions to join. Some colleges, especially those that are still in the establishment stage, require lower grades for admission for courses that one cannot pursue in an established college. The dilemma that students face here involves choosing between accessibility and quality of education that the college will offer. The same student can still join an established institution and pursue a comparatively inferior course, but using quality facilities and equipment in the presence of specialized personnel. The nursing profession requires nurses to be equipped with the excellent qualities and display readiness to observe the highest ethical standards of the profession. Some of the qualities required for students seeking entry into the nursing profession include kindness, generosity, ability to maintain confidentiality and cultural diversity (Begley, Reid, Prior, McAuley & Blackwood, 2013). Ability to adhere to the required codes of ethics and personal qualities are critical in later years when the prospective student will be serving the nursing profession. During admissions, nursing administrators may not be able to identify the characters of students. Even if they identify that a student has some questionable behaviors, administrators may lack the criteria for eliminating the student since admissions concentrate on academic qualifications. Faculty requirements Nursing profession is highly competitive. Sometimes, the associations of nurses could want to prevent congestion of people in the profession. The only method the heads of these associations can use is limiting the number of students joining the nursing profession. However, the nursing profession still needs additional nurses to serve the citizens across the all parts of the world. If the concerned stakeholders in the profession stop admitting the more students into nursing, the country may end up facing the crisis of nurses. Continued admission of students adds to the congestion of members in the nursing associations. The association stakeholders are faced with the ethical dilemma of deciding whether to limit admission to maintain the sanity in the associations, or to continue admitting more people in order to avoid scarcity of nurses (Nordby, 2009). In addition, nursing institutions do not have the specific criteria for preventing admissions since students have the minimum entry requirements. Another faculty perspective that causes dilemma in nursing education/entry criteria is the current widening student: teacher ratio. The normal ratio is required to be maintained at one instructor for twenty students (Magnus & Wes, 2012). The current ratios are ranging between 1:30 and in some schools, the ratio may reach up to 1:40. Nursing schools administrations are faced with difficult times of deciding whether to stop admitting students to maintain the generally accepted ratio, or allow classroom congestion to enable other students to access nursing education. This dilemma, however, can be overcome by employing extra instructors in order to reduce the number of students per class. Nursing institutions will be required to pay higher salaries to attract instructors into the nursing teaching profession. Conclusion Admission into nursing school poses several dilemmas arising from the perspectives of students, admissions and the faculty. Nursing school stakeholders need to come up with proper strategies of balancing both sides of the dilemma. This will enable them to arrive at alternatives that are favorable to both the institutions of nursing and students. Overcoming ethical dilemmas in admission criteria also requires institutions to pay attention to the schools’ faculty requirements. References Begley, A., Reid, J., Prior, L., McAuley, D., & Blackwood, B. (2013). Moral distress in end-of-life care in the intensive care unit. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 69(8), 1869-1880. Driscoll, A., Currey, J., Worrall-Carter, L., & Stewart, S. (2008). Ethical dilemmas of a large national multi-centre study in Australia: time for some consistency. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 17(16), pp. 2212-2220. Lewis, S. M. (2011). Medical-surgical nursing: Assessment and management of clinical problems. St. Louis: Elsevier/Mosby. Magnus, M.-M. C., & Wes, S. (2012). Beyond Community Treatment Orders. International Journal of Mental Health, 41(4), 62-81. Nordby, H. (2009). Foundations of health care: Ethical dilemmas and communicative challenges. Oslo: Unipub. Read More