Is the title “Doctor’ being devalued?

A few days ago I picked up on an interesting post on Althouse about a new Nurse Practitioner Program, where the graduates will have the title "Doctor." Here’s her post Althouse: How to make patients think of the nurse as a doctor? .

And here’s the original article:

Call the Nurse "Doctor" WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL

Your nurse practitioner — and your physical therapist and your audiologist — soon will be your "doctor."

Nursing schools at UW-Madison and Edgewood College are planning to replace their master’s degree programs for specialty nurses with doctorate degrees. It is part of a national trend requiring professional doctorates as part of certification for nurse practitioners, other specialty nurses and some other health-care workers.

The move, orchestrated by professional associations, will better prepare students for the increasingly complex health-care system and could curb staff shortages in nursing and other fields, proponents say.

But opponents, including UW-Madison’s leader, say a plethora of professional doctorates will confuse patients and cheapen the prestige of academic doctorates, or Ph.D.s. Universities should not be forced to dole out doctorates to students doing master’s level work, as is happening with nursing, said Chancellor John Wiley.

"Just as customers don’t dictate to General Motors what they name their cars, I don’t think it’s right for external constituencies to tell us what to call our degrees," said Wiley, an engineer. "It confuses our product array."

I think it’s a bad idea to devalue the Doctorate. Traditionally, the title has been earned by people getting an M.D. degree, a dental, a podiatry or optometry degree, or doing an original research dissertation in an academic field, usually earning a Ph.D. As Althouse points out, lawyers with J.D. degrees (Doctor of Jurisprudence) are not given the title of Doctor. Why dilute the title by giving it to someone doing Masters Degree work?

But it looks inevitable.

Wiley said the nursing program, even with the additions, should continue to yield a master’s. He said professional doctorates are unfairly compared with Ph.D.s, which generally require six to eight years of post-graduate work, including a dissertation.

But Wiley said the doctorate trend, which some have dubbed "credential creep," is inevitable.

"I know I’m going to lose on this," Wiley said. "To make it more palatable to the people who spend that much time in school, (the health-care professional associations) want to let them be called ‘doctor’ when they get out."

May said that by "raising the bar," the nursing program’s move to a doctorate will get the best students. That should help ease the stigma of the overworked, underpaid nurse that has helped fuel the nursing shortage, she said.

As for credential creep, she said, nursing is playing catch-up, not taking the lead.

"The creep has already left the barn," she said.