NP or CNS

[car2614]

Which is a better career move NP or CNS???

[llg, PhD, RN]

Sounds like advanced practice nursing is too niche specific.

In some respects, you are right. It was less niche-specific in the olden days (20-30 years ago) and there were some advantaged to that. That's why I have been happy with my CNS education. It prepared me for a wide variety of roles -- just not the NP role.

However ... the whole idea of graduate education is to become an expert at someting -- and that requires at least some degree of specialization. The more expertise you need for your job, the more you have to focus on that one thing and "let go" of your competence in other fields. No one (or very few, anyway) can be an expert in everything.

That's why I always advise young nurses to really investigate the different career pathways in nursing and get a little experience in different aspects of nursing practice BEFORE they make a huge investment in graduate education. It's a shame when people invest a lot of time and money going down one path only to figure out later that it was the wrong path for them.