AD Navy w/AA degree. BSN next. Advice?

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Hi. I am looking for some advice/guidance.

I am currently active duty enlisted Navy (18 years, 2 years until retirement) and I am a Substance Abuse counselor at a treatment center located at a Navy Hospital. I am not a corpsman nor have prior medical experience.

As a student I have an AA in Liberal Arts from Chaminade university in Hawaii.

I want to pursue a degree in Nursing online (not strictly but initially), however many online programs seem to offer either a 1.) RN to BSN program or a 2.) BSN program for people who already have a non-nursing Bachelor’s degree.

I am not sure what my process might look like, and am seeking others who have, or are currently getting their BSN, who’s situation (non-nursing Associate’s degree and/or military) looked similar to mine.

Specific steps or accredited program recommendations would be appreciated.
Thank you!

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Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.

Pre-licensure programs cannot be 100% online. There may be some hybrid options where the classroom portion may be online, but clinicals must be done in person. Some states also require that the classroom portion and the clinical portion occur at the same time. For example, someone couldn't simply do all of the classroom classes and then cram all of the clinical experiences into as little time as they can- classroom and clinical must be during the same timeframe.

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Since you are a couple years from retirement, I would suggest looking into the general prereq classes that are typically required for most nursing programs (e.g. A&P I/II, Microbiology, nutrition, human growth & development). Depending where you are stationed, you may be able to take a few at your community college and have them covered under tuition assistance. That will save your GI benefits for whatever nursing program you end up choosing.

It would be more helpful to have a specific nursing program in mind when choosing specific prereqs. However, I'm not familiar with any that programs that take a non-nursing AA to meet requirements for a second degree BSN program. There are few options for reputable programs with online classes (which will, of course, still have in person clinicals) - is that a hard requirement?

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Kayji,

Thank you for your reply.

Your advice about picking the school I would go to now and then completing the required pre-reqs now while on active duty would seem to be the most logical thing to do. And then when I’m out rolling right into the program and clinicals. Ty!

I will call certain Nursing programs and bounce my plan off of them next!

Good luck in all you do!

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You probably have lots of data already, but here are a couple things I found helpful in researching nursing programs.

This website has a pretty comprehensive list of schools with nursing programs (and their own ranking system): https://www.niche.com/colleges/search/best-colleges-for-nursing/

This one lists which degrees/programs are offered at nursing school: https://www.aacnnursing.org/Nursing-Education. It doesn't seem to be the most up-to-date, but it's a starting point.

Good luck to you!

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Kayji,

Appreciate you doing that! Thank you!

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