Finding the middle ground-adopting the Doctor of Nursing Practice for nurse practitioner education as a post-Master’s program while leaving Master’s level education intact

Abstract

With the full implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, educating a sufficient number of NPs for the workforce is more important than ever. Given the recommendations relating to the elevation of Nurse Practitioner (NP) education to the doctoral level, many nursing programs with Master’s level NP programs initiated planning for BSN to DNP programs and eliminated their Master’s programs, however many schools were unable to make the change. It has been the department’s experience that most of the working nurses who apply to our NP program prefer to start their training at the Master’s level with an eventual goal to resume their doctoral studies at a later date. While this incremental model may delay initial goals of transferring all NP education to the doctoral level, it appears to be a model that works for working nurses and may be how many nurses prefer to be educated.