Why do we need accreditation for nursing schools?
First and foremost, accreditation is necessary for setting high-quality standards of education received by future nurses. It is a tool of program assessment, which must help educational standards develop and promote new promising trends in the sphere. Preparation of lead qualification specialists necessitates consistency of requirements (which are not made identical, though) that can provide guidelines for educators. Finally, accreditation gives assurance to students that their programs will allow them to become valuable specialists in the future (Collins, 1997).
What does an accreditation agency look for when they review a school?
When an accreditation agency reviews a nursing school, it looks for proof that all the required competencies are well-defined and implemented in curricula. Since the evaluation methods and quality requirements differ across the states, an accreditation agency looks for a program that would provide more than just basically required knowledge and skills (Collins, 1997).
What are the quality criteria that they are looking for when they review a school?
Each nursing program should be based upon documents and guidelines that provide a unique set of criteria for the evaluation. Thus, when an accreditation agency reviews a school, it has to approach it individually in terms of quality measurements. However, there are basic criteria that indicate high-quality performance, such as efficiency, efficacy, and comprehensiveness. Waste of resources, as well as standards confusion, usually characterizes low-quality curricula (Collins, 1997).
What is meant by a quasi-governmental agency?
A quasi-governmental agency is a hybrid organization that combines legal features of both the government-run and private sector (Kosar, 2011). There are several types of such entities that include quasi-official agencies, organizations sponsored by the government, agency-related non-commercial enterprises, research organizations funded by the state, nonprofit companies, and a group of organizations of an indeterminate type (Anheier, 2014). Since the private and public sectors are similar in their goals, the latter can use the former for accreditation purposes to improve the program performance of educational institutions.
References
Anheier, H. K. (2014). Nonprofit organizations: Theory, management, policy. London, UK: Routledge.
Collins, M. (1997). Issues of accreditation: a dean’s perspective. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 2(3). Web.
Kosar, K. R. (2011). Quasi government: hybrid organizations with both government and private sector legal characteristics. Collingdale, PA: DIANE Publishing.