TO THE EDITOR:
As a RN from a family full of nurses, we were abhorred when my niece, a student nurse, showed us comments made by Dr. Spangler in The Daily Tar Heel on Nov. 20. Dr. Spangler said, “… transferring universities’ registered nursing programs to community colleges would cut operational costs in half.”
Why does Dr. Spangler think the burden for the university’s debt crisis should be solved on the back of the nursing schools? Why was nursing the only major chosen?
I have found that nurses have been targeted like teachers, firefighters and police officers because in other parts of the country, these groups tend to be unionized. Nurses in the South don’t tend to be unionized, but they are still targeted.
Dr. Spangler’s talking points appear to derive directly from marching orders developed by certain right-wing political think tanks writing legislation and policies for state legislatures.
Seriously hurting public education and especially nursing education is on the list of talking points for this particular group of politicians and their cronies.
Wake up, Dr. Spangler. There is still a nursing shortage in North Carolina. Nurses with their BS degree are prepared for supervisory and leadership positions. Nurses with advanced practice degrees provide essential medical treatment, write prescriptions and teach.
Nurses prepared at the doctoral level engage in much-needed research and practice.
Dr. Spangler’s pretense that destroying university nursing schools will lower student tuition is thinly veiled propaganda. Maybe the UNC system taught us too well to think critically and deconstruct propaganda.
Anne Teller, RN
