Education purchasers' views of nursing as an all graduate profession

The issue of whether nursing should be an all graduate profession is one of the most important questions currently facing the nursing profession. The literature indicates that there are differing views on this issue but that there is little research on the performance of graduate nurses in practice. Purchasers of education have played an increasingly significant part in nurse education since the advent of Working Paper 10 (WP10) (DOH 1989). Purchasers hold the resources for nurse education and can now decide whether to commission for diploma or degree level student nurses, therefore they will have a major influence on the outcome of this debate. The aim of this paper is to discuss the views of the purchasers of education about this issue. A purposeful sample of 34 key stakeholders involved in commissioning and contracting for education was selected and asked for their views on whether nursing will or should become an all graduate profession. Key areas that were focused upon were the problems that might emerge from an all graduate nursing profession, the advantages of graduate level nurses within the NHS, what graduateness is and what it might mean for nursing. The results indicated that purchasers were convinced of the importance of nursing graduates but only as part of the workforce. Alternative ways of increasing the percentage of graduates rather than in pre-registration education were preferred with pathways of education linked to continuing professional development. Significantly, the participants were able to articulate the attributes of a degree level education for clinical practice including leadership, assertiveness, and reflective, critical skills.