Am I on the right track?

[LoveMeSomeLDL]

Hi Everyone,

I'm a new graduate RN who, fortunately, landed an RN Residency position at a great hospital within 6 months of becoming licensed; however, the position is not in the specialty that was my first choice. That being said, I decided to take it because it was my 2nd choice and I rather be in ANY nursing residency than be unemployed.

I always knew that I would return to school to do a Masters in Nursing; however, I'm extremely confused now.

I know that I want to be a Critical Care Nurse AND i want to complete a Masters degree that will increase my knowledge of physiology/nursing sciences/interventions/pharmacology. For this reason, I was thinking of going the NP route but after reading through the threads, it seems like the NP route is geared towards educating nurses on caring for patients OUTSIDE of the hospital.

Would I be adding on student loan debt unnecessarily by going the NP route?

Will becoming a NP enhance the knowledge that I need in order to continue practicing as a bedside nurse?

Basically I want to be a Critical Care Nurse with a masters degree that gives me more physiologic & pharmacologic knowledge...

[scottaprn]

Look into acute care nurse practitioner programs and see if that matches more what you are looking for.

[natem137]

The role of a critical care nurse working on the floor and NP, either family or acute care, are two very different roles. If you are just starting your residency my recommendation would be to wait. You are going to be going to a lot of classes and learning way more than you did in school the next 6 months. I tell every new grad to wait a year until going back to school. That first year of being an actual nurse is stressful enough. You don't need to pile school on top of it. Also after a year you will have a better idea of where you want your career to go.

[LoveMeSomeLDL]

Thank You for your replies. I was hoping to start a graduate program at the completion of my first year as a working RN which is Fall 2015. Due to this reason I was assuming that I should apply now. However, I am starting to realize that I should work for a year, transition from a student nurse to a working nurse and then apply to graduate school. The hardest part of all is accepting that I will fall behind in my plan of finishing graduate school by 2016 :/