LETTER TO THE EDITORS

To the Editors:

I want to thank Kathleen Dracup and Chris Bryan-Brown for their insightful (inciteful!) editorial on the doctor of nursing practice (DNP, July 2005: 278–281). In my past work as a critical care clinical nurse specialist (CNS) and as a former member of AACN and the Society of Critical Care Medicine, I was proud of the work that the nurses who called themselves CNSs did.

If we proceed with the DNP, I believe we will affect resource replacement in advanced practice roles in ways that cannot be imagined. One has only to look at the report done by the Health Resources and Services Administration, “The Pharmacy Workforce, A Study of the Supply and Demand for Pharmacists.”¹ I quote from this document:

I suggest to you that this will be the narrative, long before a study can be conducted by anyone at the federal level in nursing. When...