Acute Care NP

Rocknurse, MSN, APRN, NP · Jan 27, 2017

I guess it depends on the market in your state. Have you tried talking to some of the hospitalist NPs in your area or hospital? I only wanted to work in a hosppital environment so I went the AGACNP route as I did not want to work with children or primary care. From what I understand you may still work in specialty offices as an AGACNP outside of the hospital.

PugsNotDrugs · Jan 28, 2017

I have done a lot of research on the topic because I feel the same way! Although I do not want to do primary care. However, with an agacnp you can work in specialty offices such as cardiology, nephrology, etc. The agacnp role is not allowed to work in a primary care setting, but may work with patients who are acutely or chronically ill. Some programs even allow for specialization in these areas. This is what draws me to the agacnp vs the fnp because it still allows for flexibility in the future while allowing me to stay in the acute care hospital setting for a while.

SopranoKris, MSN, RN, NP · Jan 29, 2017

I know both of these programs well as I live in the area and have been doing extensive research on programs I want to attend. It really depends on what *you* want to do as far as practicing as a NP. If you only want to work with patients age 13 & up in the hospital setting, then ACNP is for you. Caveat though: the ERs around here want you to be dual FNP/ACNP certified so you can see patients of all ages. ACNP, while great for the ER, only allows you to see pts aged 13 & up. I work in the ICU, so the majority of the NPs I see only have ACNP. I float to the ER quite often and the NPs there are either FNP (and work just the fast track) or dual FNP/ACNP (they handle the traumas). If you don't want to be in the hospital setting at all, then FNP is the way to go.

The FNP program at MSU provides preceptors. However, you will only be seeing patients at the community health center and the jail. That's it. You get no hospital experience whatsoever. The nice part is that you don't have to find preceptors. You also have to come to campus about 3 times per semester, so it's not 100% online. But it's nice knowing you don't have to do leg work to get preceptors. On the flip side, not too many people are thrilled about having clinicals in a jail.

The ACNP program at UM (Ann Arbor) has hybrid online & classroom. The program at UM-Flint is mostly online and you go to campus intermittently throughout the program. You do have to line up your own preceptors, but they at least can point you in the direction of previous preceptors used by other students. One of my co-workers is doing the UM (Ann Arbor) ACNP program so he can work in the the Neuro Trauma ICU, which hires more ACNPs than PAs at our hospital.

In our ICU, there are specialty practices that hire NPs to do rounding at night on their patients (typically cardiology, pulmonology, etc.), they will hire ACNPs or FNPs who have a background in ICU as an RN. Most of them either went to UM or other online brick & mortar schools. I have not yet met any NPs who went to fully online (aka for-profit) NP programs. The ER will not hire any NPs from online (for profit) schools, they want brick & mortar programs. We have no NPs in the ICU that graduated from MSU, however, I do know there are a few who are on the "hospitalist" team that round on the floors outside of critical care. They usually get hired after working in private practice (internal medicine) first.

Hope that helps! PM me if you want more details.