What is the role of graduate education in preparing nurses to meet the needs of our society - Essay Example

The paper "Role of Graduate Education in Preparing Nurses to Meet Society Need" is an excellent example of an essay on nursing. A healthy society typically depends on enough supply of well-educated as well as fully trained health professional. This implies that education is very critical in enhancing the health of society. Graduate education in particular play a significant role in preparing nurses to meet the needs of society. This paper investigates the roles of graduate education to the nursing practice with a view of improving the nurse practitioner program.

  Without graduate education, the opportunity window for nursing as a significant service to the society would definitely close due to lack of adequate skills that could make nurses foster a healthy society. Graduate education is essential to the nursing practices since it equips them with more specialized knowledge in nursing (American Nurses’ Association, 1965). Graduate education in nursing equips nurses with master’s or doctorate degree awards, which allows them to promote the health of the society from more specialized medical fields.

In their undergraduate education programs, nurses usually gain general knowledge on how to administer healthcare to the society, but a nurse specializes on a certain field in his or her graduate education program (Aiken, Clarke, Cheung, Sloane, & Silber, 2003). Usually, society is characterized by ever-changing healthcare demands. Education programs also need to advance and change accordingly in order to meet these changes. Nurses carry a lot of research about contemporary society, a task that may not be accomplished in the undergraduate programs.

The advantages associated with graduate education in nursing such as master’s and doctorate degree programs equip the nurses with more advanced knowledge about the immediate societies in which they live (American Nurses’ Association, 1965). With the prevailing health issues and demands in their minds, it becomes easier for them to administer advanced healthcare to the society without any significant complications. With such graduate education programs, nurse gains a clear understanding of the prevailing trends in healthcare and thus know what they need to do today and what could be doing in the future (Nelson, 2002).

Essentially, there are multiple ways of preparing nurses to meet the health needs of society. A common goal of nursing as a health profession is only achievable through a collaborative effort among the various entities, which include the education sector, the healthcare practice, and society. As mentioned above, graduate education in nursing equips nurses with research skills and hence their ability to learn the prevailing health issues in the society (American Nurses’ Association, 1965).

They also gain the skills to understand these needs, but society should also contribute by providing actual information about such healthcare needs. Nevertheless, the education sector equips then with the required skills for a smooth interaction between the nurses and the society. Graduate education is thus important as it makes nurse stay true to the core nursing purpose of meeting the healthcare needs of the society. Specialized and advanced nursing skills acquired through graduate nursing education make these nurses provide safe and quality healthcare (Aiken, Clarke, Cheung, Sloane, & Silber, 2003).