Col#266- 12/3/25
DIRESPECTING NURSES
By
Richard Davis
This country has faced a critical nursing shortage for years. The situation was made worse as a result of the COVID pandemic when health care workers were burned out and left professions that already needed to increase their numbers. Now, the Trump administration has created a new threat to the nursing profession by changing its definition of a professional degree to exclude nursing.
This a gut punch to the 5.86 million nurses in this country. Of that number, 920,000 are LPNs and 5 million are RNs. These are significant numbers, and I hope that all nurses are reminded of the disrespect that this Republican administration is showing to nurses when it comes time to vote.
If all goes as planned, the new designation will become effective on July 1, 2026. All major U.S. nursing organizations are outraged and they are mobilizing to squash this change, part of the big beautiful budget bill, before it happens.
The changes were made so that nurses in graduate nursing programs will not be able to access certain federal student loans and loan forgiveness programs. Not to mention the fact that this new designation demeans the entire nursing profession and makes it clear that whoever crafted this policy thinks that nurses are not worthy of the respect they deserve as the backbone of health care systems around the world.
The U.S. Department of Education has promoted this new insult to nurses. It is hardly a surprise that it comes from a department headed by Linda McMahon, the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. McMahon should be barred from every health care institution in this country that employs nurses. But, since nurses are real professionals, they would never deny anyone care, not even their most bitter enemies. That is who we are.
The situation has been summed up by a statement from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN):
“”Excluding nursing from the definition of professional degree programs disregards decades of progress toward parity across the health professions and contradicts the Department’s own acknowledgment that professional programs are those leading to licensure and direct practice. AACN recognizes that explicitly including post-baccalaureate nursing education as professional is essential for strengthening the nation’s healthcare workforce, supporting the next generation of nurses, and ultimately supporting the healthcare of patients in communities across the country.”
If this new policy goes into effect nurses who want to pursue advanced degrees will have to pay the tab on their own. The cost of education is so high today that nurses already struggle financially just to get a basic nursing education. After graduation they often have student loans to pay and with this new policy they will find any advancement in their “professional” field difficult. As always, people of color and those not born into wealth will be denied access to loans that all other health care professionals have access to.
The timing on this new policy could not be worse. The nursing profession has struggled for recognition for decades and has finally earned its rightful place. McMahon and the Trump team have made it clear that they have no respect for nurses.
I suspect that everyone involved with promoting this policy has never suffered from a serious illness. If they had, they would never propose such a foolish disrespectful policy. Trump did suffer a severe bout of COVID, but I suspect he never thought about the role that nurses played in his recovery considering his history with women.
All nurses, working and retired, need to spread the word about this egregious insult to the nursing profession and make sure that this action by Republicans has a major effect on the outcome of future elections.
