Originally Posted by deeptsna
THanks JJJoy.I appreciate your comments.
Hello VivaRN,
While researching public health I realised there were a lot of RNs with the MPH degree and read about them (RNs) finding the combination (RN,MPH) a great one.So I decided to go the RN route as I believed that it would help me gain a better foothold in the field of public health.
I believed that getting the BSN would give me a broad understanding about health , disease and caring for the diseased and hence would be a stepping stone for me into the field of public health.Will it be wrong for me to become an RN if this is the real reason i want to get the BSN?
I would appreciate your honest opinions.
Thanks once again.
As usual, with any advice, a lot depends on you. All in all, there ARE ways to make use of a nursing education besides clinical nursing. It's just not the norm and you may have to blaze your own path, so to speak.
Let me share my background. I was a bio major but had no idea what I'd do after graduation. Most classmates were pre-med and I wasn't sure I wanted that. My college had a public health school (only graduate degrees) and a nursing school (offering a BSN). I, too, heard that nurses were well-positioned in public health. The nursing advisors were encouraging as well saying there were practically endless opportunities within nursing. I changed my major to nursing with the idea that I might pursue a MPH after that.
My experience in nursing school was that the major focus was in acute conditions and inpatient nursing care. I enjoyed our 10-week unit on community health nursing. I also worked as a student research assistant to a nurse researcher. We had various observation days: spending a day with a home health nurse, a diabetes educator, etc, Most everything else was inpatient acute care: renal patients, diabetic patients, abdominal surgery patients, orthopedic patients, oncology patients, etc.
It WAS interesting to see what the inpatient experience was and I enjoyed interacting with patients, but I was also interested in the larger trajectory which we only had a little exposure to. I had also hoped to have more clinical skills mastered during school, but we had few opportunities to perform many common procedures and weren't taught at all how to draw blood or start IVs.
I don't work clinically myself and have found interesting jobs that utilize my background, but there's no obvious job title that I can look under when job hunting. I currently work in health information and I'm enjoying a job that stimulates and doesn't require juggling competing priorities with people's lives hanging in the balance! While I'm still interested in public health, I'm not sure if it's worth it to me pursue an MPH. I've got more research to do myself!
Because I have a RN license, I sometimes feel pressure to take a bedside position. I open a nursing publication and see lists of job openings for both new and experienced nurses... and they are almost all acute or chronic clinical care. I see interesting job descriptions that require several years clinical experience. I have to put up with questioning, incredulous looks as to why I'm not working in a hospital when I have the qualifications to do so and there is clearly demand and the pay is good. There's also the accusation that I took up someone else's spot in a nursing program who wanted nothing more than to be a nurse. And hiring personnel can be reluctant to hire RNs for non-clinical positions if they can't offer comparable pay.
I hope it doesn't come across that I have only negative things to say! It's just that school advisors will tend to tell mostly positives. This has been my experience and everyone is different!!!!
Once again, good luck with your choices! If you do decide to pursue nursing, I'm sure you'll make the most of it!
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