Blog 005: What is Accreditation and Why It is Important to you?

 February 25, 2020

 By Catherine Dearman, PhD, RN

Accreditation has become an integral part of higher education (Brittingham, 2009). At any given point in time, scattered across North America, thousands of faculty members, administrators and staff members are preparing for an accreditation review. Without a doubt, all nurse educators will, at some point in their career, participate in the process of renewing their institution or program’s accreditation. Despite the pervasiveness of accreditation, many educators have not had the opportunity to cultivate their knowledge of the accreditation programs for nursing. This article is the first in a series of articles aimed at providing more information on this topic.

This article covers accreditation basics, including institutional accreditation in the US as well as basic details on nursing program accreditation. Subsequent articles will address each of the nursing accreditation programs and recent changes made to each program’s standards. Since accreditation is such a large and ever-changing topic, other articles may materialize with time.