B.A. in Public Health - Best Path to Become NP in Public Health?

[Nurse Beth, MSN]

Hi Nurse Beth,

I recently graduated with my B.A. in public health and am looking to break into nursing next. My ultimate career goal is to be a public health nurse practitioner with a DNP or PhD in public health. My question for you is where do I start? In terms of practicality, and considering financial cost, what is the best path to take to achieve this? Thank you!

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Dear Where to Start,

Thanks for your great question. Congrats on earning your BA degree.

You want to be a Nurse Practitioner (NP) working in public health, with a doctoral (DNP or PhD) degree. Start with becoming a Registered Nurse (RN). Here's how:

To become an NP, you must first be an RN.

• Apply to an accredited nursing program. Because you already hold a non-nursing BSN degree, you may qualify for an accelerated BSN program
  
• Take the National Council Licensure Exam Nursing (NCLEX). The NCLEX is required to obtain your nursing license in your state or compact region
  
• Apply to an accredited NP program. You will earn your Master of Science in Nursing (MSN)
  
• Take your national certification exam to obtain your NP license in your state.
  
• Apply to a doctoral program- either DNP or PhD. DNP programs are clinically focused, and PhD programs are research focused.
  

Hope this helps.

Best wishes,

Nurse Beth

[CherylRNPhD]

After you get your RN, also look at RN to DNP programs for NPs that "skip" the MSN. There are RN to PhD programs and by the time you finish your RN, the academic landscape may have changed so be sure that you are getting the most current information on programs.

Cheryl

[Elinor]

This question needs to be picked apart a little more. Do you want to be a clinician? Or do you want to work in public health? They are not the same thing.

NPs are clinicians, first and foremost. The NP pathway is a clinical one, where you specialize in working one-to-one with individuals of a clinical population in a clinical setting. If that's what you want to do, the path that would make the most sense for you would be to get an accelerated BSN in nursing, then go to grad school for an MSN or DNP as a nurse practitioner. Note that there is no PhD to be a nurse practitioner, because NPs are clinicians -- the PhD is a research doctoral degree, and the DNP is the clinical doctoral degree. NPs can get PhDs later, for instance if they want to focus instead on research or teaching, but they are sort of superfluous to being an NP.

If you actually want to work in public health (e.g., developing and implementing public health interventions and policy or doing research), a degree as an NP -- whether MSN or DNP -- does not prepare you for that. You would need to separately obtain a nursing PhD -- which, again, is NOT an NP degree, it's a totally separate degree that does not make you an NP, and there is no need to become an NP before you get a PhD -- or simply go to graduate school for public health rather than nursing (either a masters or doctoral degree).

If you want to work in clinical practice as an NP, but you are also vaguely interested in public health, you can also go to grad school to be an NP somewhere that offers a (nursing) minor in public health. But if you have serious ambitions to have a big impact in public health policy or research, I'm not sure how far this would get you. You might end up having to go back to school again anyway for a PhD. If you get to the point of considering this, you will want to discuss it with senior persons in the nursing department who are involved themselves in academia and can advise you.

Why do you want to be an NP? What do you think NPs do, and why does that appeal to you? What exposure to medicine have you had? If you really are considering being a clinician, you need to follow an NP or MD around for a few weeks. Otherwise, this could be an expensive and lengthy mistake.

TLDR: figure out if you want to do public health or be an NP, because, while they are not mutually exclusive, they are not the same thing and you will be setting yourself up for two rounds of graduate school (in addition to the undergrad schooling to become a nurse)