What if you have a bachelor's degree in another discipline and are getting a ADN?

[AZO49008]

I'm a mid-life career changer and have a bachelor's degree in marketing. I spent 13 years in that profession and the last two positions were in management. I'll soon be entering an ADN program.

My undergraduate alma mater has a BSN program, but I'd be paying nearly $100 more per credit hour to get the nursing component that I can get by going through my local community college's very well repected ADN program. The nurses I know at both local hospitals all say the graduates of the ADN program are vastly better prepared from a clinical perspective than the BSN grads from the local university program.

Will the fact that I have a previous bachelor's degree and spent time in management come into play when seeking a promotion at some point in my future career?

I do see one major benefit to having a BSN, and that is if you want to work for a magnet hospital. It is my understanding that a certain precentage of their nurses need to be BSN status to maintain magnet certification. Is this correct?

[llg, PhD, RN]

It's not just about the ability to get hired as a new nurse but also how smooth a transition the graduate wants from student to professional. Different schools' clinical experiences can vary a lot even if the number of clinical hours is identical. If a person is concerned about their ability to pick up on clinical work, they might prefer a school with known reputation for a strong clinical education. If a certain local program has a clearly stronger reputation for turning out clinically strong graduates, that might be a deciding factor for some, regardless of whether the degree is a ADN or BSN.

Sure, you can expect to pick up more clinical skills during your new nurse orientation, but there's so much else to learn at that time that some might prefer to have stronger clinical skills right out of school. Many new nurses find the transition from student to nurse VERY stressful and for some having a stronger clinical foundation might make that transition less stressful... and might even keep them in nursing at the bedside as opposed to be overwhelmed and leaving bedside nursing altogether.

I've coordinated orientation programs for many years (and in many different states) over my 30 year career. I have definitely NOT found it to be true that BSN new grads have particular problems surviving the first year of practice. In fact, as more BSN programs are including senior-year practicums, many of those BSN grads are more clinically prepared than their ADN counterparts -- particularly in specialties such as intensive care.

Of course that's not true in every community as all types of programs vary from school to school. But it is wrong to assume that ADN grads are superior to their BSN counterparts or that they have an easier time of transition from student to professional. There are way too many factors that come into play for individual people to make that generalization -- and I am pretty sure that there is no research that supports that assumption.

[skinnedknees]

i have a b.a in english/education and am in an "adn" program however to get my bsn all i need to do is take a couple more classes (statistics, nutrition, organic chem). we live in a small community and one of the state universities offers a distance learning program for adn's that want a bsn with or without a prior ba/bs. in fact, i took one of the classes that i will need along with my other nursing courses this last quarter.

another option (the one i'm most interested in) is the master's program for rn's that have a prior ba in another feild but became an rn via the "adn" route like myself.