AG-ACNP or FNP for Emergency Room and Trauma/Burn ICU?

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Hi everyone. I am currently in nursing school for my RN and will begin a BSN program next Spring after receiving my RN but I wanted to start to think ahead for the future. I know I want to be a nurse practitioner but I am a little conflicted about which degree would be best for me. Trauma/Burn ICU and Emergency Medicine are the specialities I ultimately would love to work in. I just don’t know whether I should enroll in an Adult Gerontology Acute Care NP program or a Family Nurse Practitioner Program. I know that Emergency rooms and many trauma and burn centers offer treatment across the lifespan, which is in an FNPs scope of practice, but I read the program has more of a primary care focus. Additionally, the ER and ICUs are considered acute care, but if I were an AG-ACNP, would I only be permitted to care for adult patients? An AG-ACNP program I’m interested in offers different concentrations, including trauma and emergency preparedness and critical care... but I also know that in order to be an ENP, you must be an FNP to certify. So my question is, which DNP nurse practitioner program should I choose? Any input and advice would be EXTREMELY appreciated.

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ACNP, its not like those 200 hours of peds experience really makes a difference anyways. ACNPs can treat 15+.

For you I would work as a RN for a while before you commit to a grad program.

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Specializes in Vascular Neurology and Neurocritical Care.
15 hours ago, Numenor said:

ACNP, its not like those 200 hours of peds experience really makes a difference anyways. ACNPs can treat 15+.

For you I would work as a RN for a while before you commit to a grad program.

Puberty and up, which could be as young as 12 depending upon the patient. However, as a rule of thumb I don't support adult ACNPs seeing these patients if a specialized disorder is at play, such as pediatric oncology, hematology, or cardiology. These patients will be better off with peds NP.

On 6/1/2020 at 1:20 PM, alyryan said:

Hi everyone. I am currently in nursing school for my RN and will begin a BSN program next Spring after receiving my RN but I wanted to start to think ahead for the future. I know I want to be a nurse practitioner but I am a little conflicted about which degree would be best for me. Trauma/Burn ICU and Emergency Medicine are the specialities I ultimately would love to work in. I just don’t know whether I should enroll in an Adult Gerontology Acute Care NP program or a Family Nurse Practitioner Program. I know that Emergency rooms and many trauma and burn centers offer treatment across the lifespan, which is in an FNPs scope of practice, but I read the program has more of a primary care focus. Additionally, the ER and ICUs are considered acute care, but if I were an AG-ACNP, would I only be permitted to care for adult patients? An AG-ACNP program I’m interested in offers different concentrations, including trauma and emergency preparedness and critical care... but I also know that in order to be an ENP, you must be an FNP to certify. So my question is, which DNP nurse practitioner program should I choose? Any input and advice would be EXTREMELY appreciated.

Whatever you do, don't do FNP if you're looking to do trauma or burn ICU. FNP is OK if you want to do ER and at the moment is the only path to ENP certification unless you do a disk ACNP/ENP program (which really just an ACNP/FNP program focused on emergency care).

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