BSN is a joke

Nurses General Nursing

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I am a nurse at a major hospital where I have worked over a year after gaining my ASN. I have returned to get my BSN. What I'm not understanding is why there is such an ENORMOUS disconnect between what I do at work and the class work I need to do. It doesn'y apply at all. I have to take family care classes and informatics with very little practical application. I have to memorize all the rules of APA. My patients don't care if I can wrote a wonderful APA formatted paper. They just don't. It's like there is no appreciation in BSN education for what nursing is really about. At no time will I EVER do a CFIM on my patient or a PEEK readiness assessment. Get real. Where is the disconnect? Everyone I talk to say's the same thing about their BSN program, that it is completely useless. Who decided that nurses needed extensive training in social work and paper formatting?!?! I don't deal with social work. I have a team of social workers for that. At no time will I ever be in a patients home trying to improve the communication between family members ect. There are family counselors ect for that. It isn't my job! Yet here I am getting trained in areas I have no interest in, and will never ever use in my career. And for what? So I can say I have 3 letters behind my name and the school and hospital can make more money? Its a joke. I'm learning nothing of value. I would drop out and find a new school, but everyone I talk to has the same opinion about where ever they went. Basically healthcare has become obsessed with accolades, but forgot that those accolades were supposed to represent a level of expertise.

Why is there such an enormous disconnect between real life nursing and nursing education??!?!?

Specializes in Hospice, Palliative Care.
Do you want me to summarize the studies for you?

So, do any of the studies separate out the BSN degree from the experienced nurse showing the BSN degree itself made any difference whatsoever? What to say the same nurse having more experience through the time to get the BSN (without doing so), would have been just as effective?

Was any study done where they compared just fresh out of school BSN's without any experience to associate degree nurses with years of experience to see how effective just having the BSN was in terms of improving patient outcomes? Unless the outright degree is separated from experience, there's no real way to tell the degree did anything beneficial compred to increased experience.

I do wish they focused more on the clinical aspect & Unfortunately it's much harder now to find a job with just an ASN, since most major metro areas favor BSN (atleast where I live).

Specializes in Critical Care.
Second degree ADNs are not really ADNs as they are bachelor-prepared RNs just like BSNs; to seperate them out would shed some light on whether it is the liberal arts education or the specific BSN cirriculum that is affecting outcomes. It would be a great study to do.

For the purpose of determining what the effect would be of doing away with the ADN pathway they would still need to be looked at as ADN grads, not BSN grads, since we would lose some portion of these nurses.

It would certainly be useful to porifice out the ADN grads in the body of research with previous bachelor's degrees in order to isolate the effects of that extra year of electives, although I'm skeptical that plays a significant role.

Specializes in Critical Care.
Again I am not pushing the BSN, employers are. Do you seriously disagree with the fact the majority of this recent pressure comes from employers?

Employers that state a preference for BSN grads generally attribute this to academia, ANA, IOM, etc, so I don't think it's really originating with employers, who are at least claiming they are just following the lead of other entities.

And the level of evidence for the studies? Qualitative?

Do we have a Randomized Control Trial yet?

Is "Qualitative" a level of evidence, though, or am I misunderstanding this? Qualitative methods have their own place and are not inferior to RCT or other quantitative studies. Rather, they can often work collaboratively to help understand and resolve many human health issues, including responses to RCT -evidence based management regiments that are obviously imperfect-or we would not still be dealing with "revolving door" issues to date. I find one of the weaknesses in our profession is failure to appreciate the social side of the recipients of our biomedical approaches- for example, the reason why great life saving medical triumphs like antibiotics are now failing so many populations. More RCTs may lead to a substitute for that in another 100 years, depending on priorities of funders- but qualitative studies could lead to solutions that can help avoid the pitfalls to this problem sooner for some populations.

Specializes in Rehab nursing, critical care, tele.

The critique isn't of advanced education itself, but that the classes aren't relevant. I do think every nurse should know how to write well, so writing papers isn't a bad thing. However, I am being forced to get my BSN (when I already have a bachelor's degree from a prestigious school). That is frustrating....but, that's life. I have to do it because it's required, and there's no sense getting upset over it.

I do wish I had taken the few extra courses and just gone to PA school. But, I do have the ability to work less while my family is young, and that is pure gold, and why I stay in bedside nursing. It's almost impossible to find PA jobs with fewer hours.

Just make the best of it. Best case, you can get a better job down the road if you choose to go back to school again.

Second degree ADNs are not really ADNs as they are bachelor-prepared RNs just like BSNs; to seperate them out would shed some light on whether it is the liberal arts education or the specific BSN cirriculum that is affecting outcomes. It would be a great study to do.

Wait, I'm confused. How are ADN's with an irrelevant bachelors degree "just like BSN's". If that's the case why aren't they granted a BSN? I mean all through this thread the theme has been that it's the courses in research, theory, community nursing and leadership that make the BSN educated nurse a step above a diploma/ADN nurse. That these courses, in particular, are what impacts our nursing practice. It's fairly safe to say that someone with another type of degree and an ADN didn't have these specific courses (at least that's what has been opined here by several posters). So are you saying it's the English, history and civics courses that are the reasons for the better outcomes in the Aiken studies? If that's the case then hand me my BSN because I went to college for two years prior to nursing school and my hard sciences, nutrition and sociology type courses during nursing school were done through the local university (Dean's list I might add).

Really I'm mostly jesting but I find this post a little odd given all the talk about how the ability to understand the nuances of research, grasp nursing theories and have a management class sets the BSN apart from all the others yet now you're saying that really ANY degree+an ADN is really the same thing as a BSN even if the education is lacking all those things that people here have deemed so important. And if that's the case why don't those second degree ADNs get to sport a BSN on their badges?

Specializes in Adult Internal Medicine.
So, do any of the studies separate out the BSN degree from the experienced nurse showing the BSN degree itself made any difference whatsoever? What to say the same nurse having more experience through the time to get the BSN (without doing so), would have been just as effective?

Nursing experience was also a statistically significant variable in mortality and failure to rescue so it was controlled for in the model used to assess both staffing levels and nurse education

Was any study done where they compared just fresh out of school BSN's without any experience to associate degree nurses with years of experience to see how effective just having the BSN was in terms of improving patient outcomes? Unless the outright degree is separated from experience, there's no real way to tell the degree did anything beneficial compred to increased experience.

Not exactly, at least as far as I know. What would the purpose be of comparing novice BSNs to experienced ADNs; we know that experience level is an independent variable in outcomes. From a study design standpoint, you can separate the degree and experience via modelling as these studies did.

These studies don't show that every nurse with a BSN is better than every nurse with an ADN, we all know that is not true. We also all know (I hope) that experience is also an important factor (as well as staffing levels).

Specializes in Adult Internal Medicine.
Employers that state a preference for BSN grads generally attribute this to academia, ANA, IOM, etc, so I don't think it's really originating with employers, who are at least claiming they are just following the lead of other entities.

Employers are following the lead of $$$. Lets not kid ourselves it is about anything else.

Specializes in Adult Internal Medicine.
The critique isn't of advanced education itself, but that the classes aren't relevant. I do think every nurse should know how to write well, so writing papers isn't a bad thing. However, I am being forced to get my BSN (when I already have a bachelor's degree from a prestigious school). That is frustrating....but, that's life. I have to do it because it's required, and there's no sense getting upset over it.

This is ridiculous, IMHO. Who is making you do it? Your employer I assume?

I do wish I had taken the few extra courses and just gone to PA school.

It seems like you could have gotten an MSN easier and it would have opened more doors.

Specializes in Adult Internal Medicine.
Wait, I'm confused. How are ADN's with an irrelevant bachelors degree "just like BSN's". If that's the case why aren't they granted a BSN? I mean all through this thread the theme has been that it's the courses in research, theory, community nursing and leadership that make the BSN educated nurse a step above a diploma/ADN nurse. That these courses, in particular, are what impacts our nursing practice. It's fairly safe to say that someone with another type of degree and an ADN didn't have these specific courses (at least that's what has been opined here by several posters). So are you saying it's the English, history and civics courses that are the reasons for the better outcomes in the Aiken studies? If that's the case then hand me my BSN because I went to college for two years prior to nursing school and my hard sciences, nutrition and sociology type courses during nursing school were done through the local university (Dean's list I might add).

Really I'm mostly jesting but I find this post a little odd given all the talk about how the ability to understand the nuances of research, grasp nursing theories and have a management class sets the BSN apart from all the others yet now you're saying that really ANY degree+an ADN is really the same thing as a BSN even if the education is lacking all those things that people here have deemed so important. And if that's the case why don't those second degree ADNs get to sport a BSN on their badges?

Simply, what I am saying is we don't have any idea what it is about the BSN degree that is responsible for the differing outcomes. I think we all would make the assumption that is it nursing-related classes but maybe it's general-ed classes or some other factor that wasn't separated from the degree (of which there are a million).

Again I want to be clear: none of this says a BSN nurse is a "step above" anyone, individual variability is a far bigger factor than any of these other variables.

Simply, what I am saying is we don't have any idea what it is about the BSN degree that is responsible for the differing outcomes. I think we all would make the assumption that is it nursing-related classes but maybe it's general-ed classes or some other factor that wasn't separated from the degree (of which there are a million).

Again I want to be clear: none of this says a BSN nurse is a "step above" anyone, individual variability is a far bigger factor than any of these other variables.

This a thousand times over!!!

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