FELLOW NURSES AFRICA – NEWS
27 November 2025 | Lagos
Nursing Not Professional Enough? ICN Leads Global Rebuke of US Policy
The International Council of Nurses (ICN) has delivered a forceful rejection of a United States Department of Education proposal that would effectively declare graduate nursing education no longer worthy of recognition as a “professional degree”.
In a statement released today from Geneva, the ICN accused the US authorities of setting a “dangerous precedent” by seeking to remove nursing from the list of disciplines eligible for full federal graduate loan support and loan-forgiveness programmes.
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The rule, published on 10 November 2025, would reclassify master’s and doctoral nursing programmes alongside general academic degrees rather than alongside established professional qualifications such as medicine, law and dentistry. The practical consequence would be sharply reduced borrowing limits and the loss of income-driven repayment and public-service forgiveness options for thousands of future advanced-practice nurses and nurse educators.
ICN President José Luis Cabos Serrano said:
“Nursing is a highly educated, highly regulated profession. To suggest otherwise is not only factually incorrect but profoundly damaging. Advanced-practice nurses and the educators who train them are indispensable to modern health systems. Any policy that deliberately restricts access to their preparation jeopardises patient care in the United States and sends a chilling signal to health workforces worldwide.”
The ICN’s intervention aligns it unequivocally with the American Nurses Association (ANA), which has described the proposal as an existential threat to the profession. The ANA’s online petition demanding reversal of the plan has now exceeded 200,000 signatures.
The timing could scarcely be worse. The United States is grappling with the departure of 138,000 registered nurses since 2022 and faculty shortages so severe that more than 80,000 qualified applicants were turned away from nursing programmes last year. Globally, the World Health Organization and ICN estimate a current shortfall of 5.8 million nurses.
For African nations expanding advanced-practice roles to bridge physician shortages, the decision carries particular weight. Many nursing faculties and regulatory bodies across the continent look to robust US graduate standards as benchmarks, while thousands of African nurses pursue American advanced qualifications as a route to licensure and improved livelihoods.
Fellow Nurses Africa has added its voice to the international condemnation, warning that de-professionalising nursing education in one of the world’s leading economies risks undermining hard-won gains in scope-of-practice recognition across Africa.
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Fellow Nurses Africa is the independent voice of African nursing, we educate, inform and support nurses across Africa
