Early in its professional development, nursing schools were well served by the accreditation process. It provided sound guidelines and clout with the home institutions; it weeded out failing programs that needed to be closed. In the present era, however, many schools of nursing are feeling over-regulated. State evaluation for nursing programs, general collegiate evaluation, and NLN evaluation together consume a heavy dose of scarce time of deans and faculties. Cost and time are big factors in an era of down-sizing — a phenomenon that education has not escaped.

Backing away from the politics, one can ask the perfectly justifiable question of whether nursing still needs and profits from a specialized professional evaluation apart from state evaluation and academic accreditation of the home institution in which the nursing program is housed. The answer might lie in a careful assessment of what is gained collectively through accreditation at this time. One measure might be some study of the actual, contemporary changes that have taken place in nursing programs due to NLN accreditation. Nitty-gritty measures would serve to answer this question, items like: how many schools actually got bigger budgets, more nursing library books, or more faculty lines in order to meet accreditation standards? It would be interesting to have cost/benefit studies balancing what was gained versus what was lost in dean and faculty time for report preparation.

Whether school accreditation be under NLN or AACN, the question remains: Do we still benefit from a separate professional education accreditation process? Has the era of professional accreditation passed? Has accreditation been superseded by a focus on individual certification?

Summary

To date, we have relied on licensure, certification, and accreditation to maintain standards for the nursing profession (in practice and in education), both for the public and for the profession. What are your thoughts?