Are online ANP degrees destroying our credibility?

Nursing Students NP Students

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I was talking to a private practice doctor about an opening in his practice. Currently, I am employed by the hospital. He told me that they will only consider PA's due to having more of a hard science based training and longer residency. I have heard this before and brushed it off. Especially, considering that would only be of factor for new grads possibly. I brought this up and he gave me a second rejection with a whole new excuse. His practice as a whole were considering hiring NPs until a PA brought up you can get your degree online. He stated they can not take our education seriously with such low standards. UUUURRRGGGHH. I didn't really know what to say. Mostly due to not expecting that response. Either way he is not someone I would want to work for with that attitude. I want to know what other people's thoughts are regarding the online programs? Will it hurt our profession and the quality of our reputation?

Specializes in Anesthesia, Pain, Emergency Medicine.

something i'm curious about. why is a med student hanging out in a nursing forum?

it seems you really don't like nurses. you have made 6 posts, all very anti-nurses.

i for one am really not interested in what you have to say. you are not a nurse nor a np.

i'm actually a medical student in my clinical years currently and, to be honest, a lot of this disrespect (at least in my experience and those of my close friends at other med schools) is really indoctrinated by the nursing and ancillary staff rather than attendings/residents.

it's the horrible experiences we've had the with nursing staff treating us so terribly that have turned us against them. i promise you that the vast majority of us enter the medical profession excited to work with others to help patients. i just don't think it's fair to point fingers solely at physicians when, in my own and many other medical students' experiences, the nursing staff have played a significant role in shaping the way our future selfs treat nurses.

I have 30+ years of clinical experience as a nurse in ED, ICU, pediatrics, home health, med-surg, case management, office, and occupational nursing. I sure hope that helps in NP school. I would think that my clinical experience in addition to 50+ years of living on this planet, raising a family, and interacting with other human beings might help a little, too. I don't believe it's just about diagnosing and prescribing. It's about optimizing the health of our clients in a holistic way. I've also learned there is more than one way to skin a cat, if you know what I mean.

Specializes in Critical Care.

Not to digress, but I think it's good that studentdrtobe is on AllNurses... it's not an exclusive membership site. And truth be told, he/she is probably more knowledgeable about medical school and medical education anyway so there is definitely something to learn there.

And not to sound like a suck up either, but I do not think they have displayed an "antinurse" tone at all or verbal attacks on the nursing profession.. If anything it was more of a critique about nursing education: the subject of the main topic.

Specializes in Anesthesia, Pain, Emergency Medicine.

Very doubtful

Those who think online degrees are damaging the reputation of the profession need to realize that online education is the way of the future. At many of these programs, like Georgeotnw, students sign-up and attend classes just like at a brick and mortar school. These NP programs have been around forever, and the online programs have the same professors and same sylabuses as on campus, now they are just being offered from a distance. I would like to hear what opponents of online degrees have to say about such programs, i.e. Georgeotown, Rush, Valderbilt? Prospective employers wouldn't even know that this degree was "online"

Specializes in ER, HH, CTICU, corrections, cardiology, hospice.

Why do you think schools are going to online only courses? To allow working while going to school? Sounds nice, nicer than the real hard reason. It allows more students to attend at the same time without the overhead of classrooms and all that entails. They are doing it for business reasons plain and simple.

Why do you think schools are going to online only courses? To allow working while going to school? Sounds nice, nicer than the real hard reason. It allows more students to attend at the same time without the overhead of classrooms and all that entails. They are doing it for business reasons plain and simple.

All schools are in business to make money. They may get more money by offering distance education as they reach more students. I'm in business to save money which is why as a customer I prefer distance education.

Specializes in ER, HH, CTICU, corrections, cardiology, hospice.

You pay less for online courses? I did not know that.

You pay less for online courses? I did not know that.

No, you save a lot of gas money as one benefit of many.

Specializes in ER, HH, CTICU, corrections, cardiology, hospice.

What are the other benefits?

What are the other benefits?

Google research on distance ed, but for me I save time traveling to school so say it was an hour there and back to class I have 2 extra hours to study. I save wear and tear on my vehicle as well as gas. I don't have to sit in a class and listen to other students ask questions that they would already know if they were prepared. Then there are many students who have yet learned how to read the syllabus. I don't have to be in class at a certain time but can look at class material anytime I want. If there are videos I can watch them over and over vs having a one time experience in class. I did most of my post-masters program in Dhaka, Bangladesh and Bangkok, Thailand and even did some clinical at a Navy hospital in Okinawa. I was able to interact with students from all over creation vs from one locale.

Google research on distance ed, but for me I save time traveling to school so say it was an hour there and back to class I have 2 extra hours to study. I save wear and tear on my vehicle as well as gas. I don't have to sit in a class and listen to other students ask questions that they would already know if they were prepared. Then there are many students who have yet learned how to read the syllabus. I don't have to be in class at a certain time but can look at class material anytime I want. If there are videos I can watch them over and over vs having a one time experience in class. I did most of my post-masters program in Dhaka, Bangladesh and Bangkok, Thailand and even did some clinical at a Navy hospital in Okinawa. I was able to interact with students from all over creation vs from one locale.

Hey, I'm curious. Is there any single- or multi-institutional study comparing students physically attending school vs. those doing the online program? I mean, something looking at objective measures rather than subjective ones.

Let me know. I'd be interested in reading some literature regarding that. A cursory search of PubMed didn't really yield anything, but my search terms may have been poor.

Even in med school, where we had our lectures videotaped, most people still went to class. One reason was because we had to be on campus several times a week. This was for various H&P workshops, working in the clinical performance center with standardized patients, working in groups to solve problems (ex. working through a clinical case related to the basic science topic we were currently learning or solving physiology/pathophys problems, etc), working in the clinic with our preceptors, etc. So, even if a med student watched lectures online without going to class, it is literally impossible to do the first two years of medical school entirely online. It's not adequate to prepare us for the clinical years.

I think that's where you might see some physician resistance regarding hiring someone who has gotten their education online for the most part. It's because, for us, it's impossible to not be on campus multiple times per week getting rigorous feedback on everything from our basic reasoning through problems to how we phrase questions during our history-taking, etc. It's this continual adjustment and reinforcement that prepares us for the clinical years, where we're constantly questioned about our reasoning behind generating a differential, our treatment plans, etc.

So, I'm curious as to how that compares to a nearly-entirely online education. Common sense suggests that it wouldn't be similar to the level of feedback and critique that I'm used to. I know you mentioned that you had to videotape yourself doing and H&P and mail it in to the school or something like that, but that's not the same as walking out of a patient's (or standardized patient's) room, getting immediate feedback from the attending physician as well as the residents and/or M4 students, learning from that feedback, and doing another H&P right then and there and improving upon/reinforcing what you just learned.

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