The first ever global rankings for nursing education have been released with American universities topping the table.
The QS World University Rankings by subject published it's largest ever list featuring 42 disciplines including nursing for the first time. King's College University in London was the highest ranking British university at number 6. This was closely followed by the University of Manchester at number 8.
Executive dean of the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at King's College University Professor Ian Norman, said: ‘This achievement recognises the major contribution of the Faculty to the research base of professional nursing and midwifery and also the high quality of education and career preparation provided for our students. It is a reflection of the hard work, expertise and dedication of all our academic and professional services staff.'
The University of Pennsylvania in the US was the top of the list for nursing with John Hopkins University, also in the US, rated second.
The most featured country in the top 20 for nursing education is the United States with nine universities in the top 20 and 32 places overall. The United Kingdom featured three times in the top 20.
Ben Sowter, Head of the QS Intelligence Unit, said: 'Though the US and UK remain dominant, our most inclusive rankings ever show that excellence can be found in an ever-increasing number of places. Nations likeAustria, South Africa, Finland, Brazil, China, and Sweden can be found in the top 10 of our tables. Our new top 100 for nursing acknowledges academic excellence in 19 different countries, with institutions from six different countries in the top 20.'
The opinion of 76,798 academics and 44,426 employers informed the results, alongside the analysis of 28.5 million research papers and over 113 million citations sourced from the Scopus/Elsevier bibliometric database. For nursing, 247,910 papers were indexed and analysed for citations. This contributed to QS considering 848 institutions for inclusion, nominally ranking 396, and publishing a final ranking of the world’s top 100.