BA in Psychology to BSN

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  1. Is it worth it to switch from Psych to nursing? (Even if you love Psych)

    • 1
      5- YES ABSOLUTELY
    • 1
      4- Yes but you'll have some drawbacks
    • 3
      3- Depends on the person
    • 0
      2- No, stick with what you love if you can
    • 0
      1- Absolutely not ! Don't do something you'll regret!

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Hi Guys !

I'm a 4th year UCR student getting my bachelors degree in Psychology. I recently decided that instead of applying to MFT programs I want to become an RN. I looked into accelerated BSN programs but I am learning that you actually have to HAVE your BA at the time of admission ( I won't have mine until this May). I really want to bridge to nursing but I'm nervous that I will have to start from the very beginning. I looked into APU but they only offer an MSN for those with a completed BA in another field. I have a lot of my pre reqs done ( Chemistry Biology Statistics and all the Liberal Arts) but was planning on taking all of the Physio and and Anatomy now that I'm in my last year at UCR and have full scholarships. Any tips would be GREATLY appreciated. Thank you !

A little bit of why I want to be a nurse: Firstly, I'm not a very "nurse" type of person. I work at a psychiatric hospital and everyone with a BA in psych or close to completing like me are working as floor staff making $12 an hour. Meanwhile the nurses do pretty much what I would love to do and they make a lot more. This has sort of solidified my decision and even though I don't like blood and guts, I would rather do something that has job stability and hopefully land in some type of psych nursing in the end.

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Specializes in Behavioral Health.

Hi. The ABSN programs here only require you have your prior degree by the time the nursing program begins. So, you could apply now as long as your graduation date is before the start date of the ABSN program. I got my psych degree, then spent a year doing pre-reqs (the idea came to me later than it did to you), and I was accepted even though I had two quarters of pre-reqs left to finish. My microbio course ended three weeks before nursing school started. It was no problem, but there's probably an admissions person or program coordinator who can tell you for sure. If that person already told you that you have to graduate first, then... graduate. Keep your psych hospital job, enjoy some free time, and apply next year. Or find a different school. :)

Regarding the work... sometimes it's heavy on the mental health and sometimes it's heavy on medications and charting. I have days where I spent a lot of time with patients talking, explaining their legal status (holds, etc), doing education, discussing coping strategies or breathing techniques or sleep hygiene or a million other things. I also have days when I depend on my MHTs to do those things because I have a discharge, then an admit, two people on suicide watches (requiring 15-min checks), two patients who get mag salt foot soaks (you never have one - someone else always decides they need one, too), a shy bladder that needs scanning, someone's inflamed hemorrhoids, a doc who won't return pages, and a patient in the double lock with the informal diagnosis of superpsychosis whose burning through antipsychotic meds like they're Tums.

Charting sucks. Even when you're good at it, it never seems to end. I spend way more time away from patients doing mandatory, non-therapeutic things than I ought to... but a lot of our money depends on us jumping through Medicare/insurance hoops.

Then there are the aggressive patients, and the patients who become enamored with you, or the patients whose disease process interferes with helping them. I imagine you have experience with these, but as the nurse you have the responsibility of deciding when to force medications on patients. Force medications and restraints are traumatic and erase or erode whatever therapeutic alliance you may have had with that patient. Clearly there are times when a patient must be medicated - when they're attacking people or hurting themselves - but other times it's a judgment call and you decide, are you going to traumatize this person now, or hope it's a transient mood and they settle down without hurting anyone?

Or maybe you have a patient who's at risk for delirium, which makes Ativan risky, but who is also having an anxiety attack. Do you put them at even greater risk of delirium (and possibly more medication), or let them sit with anxiety? This gets harder when your non-medical staff and patients think of Ativan as relatively harmless, as they may push you to medicate when other options might be safer.

I don't want to make it sound too awful. It's just that the role is really different from the techs/counselors, and while the pay is better, the part of me that thought I would become a therapist sometimes misses the time to sit and talk to patients. So, you should be aware of how things will change with the different role. Still, it's a great educational experience, and sometimes you really do see people improve. That's worth a lot.

Good luck. Sorry for the novel. :)

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