An Introduction

Hi everybody. I'm really a lurker type since posting tends to eat up TIME, which is a very precious commodity, but allnurses.com keeps prompting to post, so here goes. I'll throw in a question too. I graduated nursing school with an ADN, with a previous BA in liberal arts, in June, 2008 as a grandmother. I'm still at my first job doing the "obligatory" year of med/surg even though it's not my cup of tea. In order to get full pension on retirement, my union requires 20 years. I'll be over 70 then. No way can I do this type of work for that long - I started out with a bad back. I'm looking to go back to my roots, which is l&D/postpartum/women's health as soon as September rolls around and the year is over. I was a Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educator and DONA doula for 9 years before going to nursing school.

I'm also starting to get the itch to further my education. I used to want to be a CNM, but after so many years of being on call 24/7, I've had enough considering the working conditions of CNM's today. If conditions were different or if I were younger, though, I would do it. Plus, a my midwife, who is a PhD and teaches midwifery, advised, rather, to become a Family Health NP. I'm also considering WHNP. Besides, I'm a nerd who actually likes school. Maybe because it makes me feel young again? (I'm actually disappointed with nursing, at least my job. School led me to believe that it would be more cerebral. Instead, it's more, ahem, rectal.)

When I first started looking into schools, there were a bunch of bridge programs where if you're an RN with a Bachelor's in something else, you could skip the BSN and go right for the Masters - even an NP. I started researching again - thinking of starting school in Sept 2010, but can't find those programs anymore. Do they no longer exist? Is it now necessary to do the BSN first?

Also, is it possible to do school very part time online? I can't afford to stop working full time, plus I'm a wife, mother and grandmother who's already struggling to juggle everything. I've already pretty much stopped having any social life. On top of everything, working nights is a killer, but as badly as I want to switch to days, it's not going to happen in the very near future. Plus, my hospital pays only a certain fixed amount per year. So doing a specific 2 or 3 year program is out of the question for lack of time and money. BTW, is there any scholarship money out there for this level?

Also, I've heard that NP's hate their jobs. That they end up having to do all the "scut work." That they're overworked and underpaid - though aren't we all? It just seems like a pitty to invest so much and then hate the results.

Okay, so that's my first post. All the best.