title: Degrees of choice.
abstract: Whether degrees are essential for emergency nurses, is a question that seems to exercise lots of people these days. Certainly there is a view that to be a nurse you need kind hands and a warm heart and that's about enough. Nursing is seen by some as an academically pedestrian activity and there are plenty who believe that degrees for nurses are a waste of time in every sense. After all, the argument runs, surely you don't need a degree to give out bedpans. Given that the vast majority of nurses are- women, the argument against degrees does have a rather sexist undertone to it a lot of the time.