At your next visit to the doctor, your care provider will likely have earned his or her advanced degree online.
As demand for health services booms, odds are increasing that your next visit to the doctor will mean meeting a specialized nurse—one who may have earned his or her advanced degree online through courses similar to more offerings at local colleges.
“With the Affordable Care Act there could be an additional 32 million to 38 million covered with health insurance,” Misericordia University professor and director of graduate nursing Brenda Hage said. “We need to have more advanced practice nurses to care for those people.”
When most people talk of nurses they are thinking of a registered nurse, usually a status obtained with an associates or, increasingly, a bachelor’s degree.
But as the face of medicine changes, nursing is changing as well, with many getting master’s degrees as advanced practice nurses able to order tests and prescribe medicines.
(Next page: Why online degree options are exploding)