scholarly journals Registered nurses’ experiences with master’s degree competence in the specialist health service: A qualitative descriptive study

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 221-228
Author(s):  
Siri Kjellaas ◽  
Gunilla Fredheim ◽  
Øyfrid Larsen Moen

The application of master’s degree competence in nursing practice has been a hot topic of debate in various forums in recent years. International findings suggest that nurses with master’s degrees can make a positive contribution to the quality of services and patient safety, and an association has been suggested between higher education in nursing and a reduced mortality rate in hospitals. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate registered nurses’ (RNs’) experiences with how a master’s level education affected their work in the specialist health service. An inductive qualitative study design was used. Data were collected through focus group interviews with 18 participants in five groups and analysed using content analysis. This study is reported in accordance with COREQ. The results showed an ‘expectation gap’ between the RNs with master’s degrees and their managers. Our findings also reflected the RNs’ ambivalent experiences of being both a threat and a resource. The application of the competence describes the desire to utilise and recognise the master’s qualification. Furthermore, expectations for the future in the specialist health service were focussed on more evidence-based practice. The results of this study highlight that enhanced competence is a priority area aimed at meeting current and future needs for evidence-based practice and effective services. Clinical master’s degrees place emphasis on both the RNs’ clinical skills and their ability to obtain and apply new knowledge.

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 550-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen M Henderson ◽  
Margaret Fletcher

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is challenging for most nurses due to the time constraints of caring for patients and the emerging pressures of a changing health service. To explore these challenges, and thus to establish possible means of overcoming them, three focus groups ( n = 17) with children’s nurses were conducted. Participants were asked how they would define EBP, what the barriers to EBP were, what skills they needed to help access evidence and how they could integrate evidence into everyday practice. Data were analysed thematically and the anticipated themes of definitions of EBP, barriers, education and nursing culture were determined. Important subthemes were personal and employer disengagement, passivity and lack of resource utilisation. Passive use of evidence readily available in patient folders and on the wards was common. It seemed that little consideration was given to how often this evidence was updated. Nurses define their access to evidence as primarily passive in nature. This is reinforced by a lack of ready access to ongoing education and a perceived lack of investment at institutional level in their continued engagement with evidence. Promoting EBP needs to engage more with those ritual and traditional aspects of nursing culture to challenge these perceptions.


Author(s):  
Dennis G. Fisher ◽  
Grace L. Reynolds

There has been a considerable amount of interest in graduation rates of baccalaureate degree programs in the educational literature. There has also been some attention given to graduation from doctoral programs and from associate degree programs. However, there is almost no literature on the graduation rates for Master’s degree programs. This report uses a method of analysis known as survival analysis or event history analysis to examine the time to event for two different events leading to completion of a Master’s degree. One event is the time to preliminary examination, and the other event is the time to final thesis defense or final examination. The data compare three different Master’s programs in a psychology department of one of the largest campuses of one of the largest public university systems in the United States.


2020 ◽  
Vol 110 (7) ◽  
pp. 978-985
Author(s):  
Angela J. Beck ◽  
Jonathon P. Leider ◽  
Heather Krasna ◽  
Beth A. Resnick

As postsecondary tuition and debt levels continue to rise, the value proposition of higher education has been increasingly called into question by the popular media and the general public. Recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics now show early career earnings and debt, by program, for thousands of institutions across the United States. This comes at an inflection point for public health education—master’s degrees have seen 20 years of growth, but forecasts now call for, at best, stagnation. Forces inside and outside the field of public health are shifting supply and demand for public health master’s degrees. We discuss these forces and identify potential monetary and nonmonetary costs and benefits of these degrees. Overall, we found a net benefit in career outcomes associated with a public health master’s degree, although it is clear that some other master’s degrees likely offer greater lifetime earning potentials or lower lifetime debt associated with degree attainment. We outline the issues academic public health must engage in to successfully attract and train the next generation of public health graduates.


2005 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 88-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Nutt

It is timely to review the relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatry, given the continuing move towards more evidence-based practice in medicine, as well as two recent government initiatives to improve the value of research in the National Health Service (NHS), especially research that is commercially driven.


Author(s):  
Jim Graham ◽  
Marolo Alfaro

The Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board directs undergraduate programs towards a broadly based education in engineering. Employers accept the need for a broad education but also want young engineers to have specialist training for practice. These very different requirements appear at first sight to be in conflict. In the United States and Europe, but not yet in Canada, licensing bodies are moving towards requiring a master’s degree or equivalent for licensing. Companies that engage in international projects are concerned they may be unable to compete if other countries require master’s degrees for licensing, while Canada does not. Universities should develop broad educational undergraduate programs that can actually be completed in four years in principal areas like civil, electrical, mechanical engineering. Additional effort should be directed towards specialist master’s programs that provide training for employability.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. E15-E19
Author(s):  
Kenneth P. Nickles ◽  
Deborah W. Mathews ◽  
Heather Nimmagadda ◽  
Mary E. Bailey ◽  
Tina M. Cox ◽  
...  

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