By Mary S. Collins, PhD, RN

Article originally published August 13, 1997

Introduction

It is redundant to mention that health care, delivery of services, and the educational preparation of health care professionals is in transition. Chaos, perhaps, is a better term. Professional nursing embraced President Clinton's activities to transform the present health care system. Congress and the President could not agree on a comprehensive plan and the Health Security Act of 1993 died in Congress. What we are left with is one component of health care delivery, specifically, managed care, fueling the pervasive changes in health care. The rapidly changing nature of health care certainly affects the planning and implementation of educational programs in nursing.

Contemporary issues in nursing education include that of accreditation. Just as the practice area is changing through managed care, nursing education and its accrediting bodies are changing. Nursing education has been forced to enter discussions regarding the role of and need for accreditation and to make recommendations related to accreditation in current and future aspects of its existence.

Role

As a dean charged with the leadership of a school of nursing, I have had the opportunity to look at the real role of accreditation. One of the questions often asked is: "Do we need accreditation in the health care arena of today?" The answer is that we do. We need accreditation to promote consistently high standards in nursing education.

The ultimate goal of any nursing program, I believe, is to prepare the highest quality of graduate for practice today and tomorrow. Every activity, course, admission decision, clinical site selection, and evaluation is driven by that goal. Accreditation has to be a measure of quality. In the dynamic state of nursing education today, accreditation must act as illumination to help programs move forward in sustaining current quality programs, developing new relevant programs, and creating an environment which promotes positive trends in nursing education.