Transforming Prelicensure Nursing Education: Preparing the New Nurse to Meet Emerging Health Care Needs

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching joins a chorus of calls for transformation of prelicensure nursing education (Benner, Sutphen, Leonard, & Day, 2009). Citing the shift of significant responsibility to nurses for managing complex medical regimens, as well as the increasing complexity of community-based practices, Benner and colleagues concluded that nurses entering the field are not equipped with the essential knowledge and skills for today's practice nor prepared to continue learning for tomorrow's nursing (p. 31). They found: a) weak curricula in natural sciences, technology, social sciences, and humanities, and in developing cultural competency; b) weak classroom instruction and limited integration between classroom and clinical experiences; c) limited strategies in helping students develop habits of inquiry, raising clinical questions, seeking evidence for practices; d) faculty and student perception that students are ill prepared for their first job and dissatisfaction with the teaching preparation of current nursing faculty; and e) multiple pathways to eligibility for the licensure examination, with tremendous variability in prerequisites, curricular requirements, and the quality of offerings.