BSN is a joke

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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??!?!?

Do you want me to summarize the studies for you? They make abstracts for that. I am happy, for the "good of all", to summarize them for you and the readers that are too lazy or too poorly equipped to research the studies on their own. I would be happy to provide full-text to anyone that requests it, if they don't have access. Here are just a few of the Aiken studies:

Aiken et al (2003), JAMA: "Discharge abstracts for the universe of 232–342 patients aged 20 to 85 years who underwent general surgical, orthopedic, or vascular procedures from April 1, 1998, to November 30, 1999, in the 168 nonfederal hospitals were obtained from the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council, which checks the data for completeness and quality."

Aiken et al (2011), Med Care: 30-day inpatient mortality and failure to rescue across 665 adult acute care general hospitals in California (n = 271), Pennsylvania (n = 153), Florida (n = 168) and New Jersey (n = 73). These are four of the nation's largest states, and account for over 20% of annual hospitalizations. The hospitals included in our sample represent 86% of all general acute hospitals in the four states and account for over 90% of all adult general, vascular, and orthopedic surgical patient discharges in those states.

Aiken et al (2014), Med Care: In-hospital all-cause mortality and same-hospital all-cause 30-day readmission were coded as dichotomous variables with nonoccurrence as the reference category. The sample was derived from adult nonpsychiatric inpatient discharges from an urban Magnet-designated academic medical center.Our data extraction criteria included all discharges from medical-surgical units of adult (18 and older) patients during a 7-month period between June 1, 2011 and December 31, 2011 and their direct care nurses, resulting in a linked sample of n = 10,310 patients and n = 1477 nurses.

You haven't mentioned the specific outcomes of the studies that I asked you about earlier. If these are the major studies, why didn't you state what the specific outcomes were? What were the specific outcomes measured, and how were the outcomes measured? That is what I asked you to tell us. You say that nursing care provided by nurses with a BSN demonstrated superior patient outcomes in the studies.

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Specializes in Nursing Professional Development.
I was one of those people who thought having to get a BSN was stupid. I have a BS in Biology and thought that should be enough. When I started my journey, the program where I took my first semester was the nightmare everyone talks about: papers after papers and I swear they did not read them, just looked at APA and that was it. hardly any of the instructors were doctorate-level, even the director of the program was not qualified, in my opinion, with a BSN and a MPH. Really????

I changed programs to one where all instructors were Ph.D level. The program was a 180 degree change from the first one. I loved it! It built upon what I had learned and experienced (I waited almost 2 years after getting my ADN and first job). It had context. The activities did include papers, but that was a small part of it. I valued that program and now an all for the extra education.

I have also had first-hand experience with how differently prepared some of the ADN nurses versus the BSN nurses are. ADN nurses have MUCH more hands on. I am a preceptor now and it can be quite shocking how little hands-on experience some new grads have had.

I think until some of these RN-BSN programs are more standardized, there is going to be a wide variety of experiences.

I agree with most of your post ... but you "sort of" contradicted yourself. On the one hand, you pointed out that when you changed from one BSN program to another, you saw a significant difference. Not all BSN completion programs are the same! Some are much better than others. That is a very important point. Too many people generalize too much and act as if all programs are the same. I get very frustrated when people post that they are looking for the fastest, easiest program they can find -- and then complain about the quality. If you are going to invest in education, invest in good quality education -- as you did. Thank you for posting what you did.

But ... I believe you made a mistake later in yoru post suggesting that ADN programs offer their students more "hands on" care -- suggesting that all ADN programs are alike and all entry-level BSN programs are alike. That's not universally true. It may be true of the particular programs in your town ... but you cannot generalize that about all programs. In my town, the 2 programs with the most "hands on" experience are the 2 leading BSN programs. We have some horrible ADN programs that offer the bare minimum -- and should be closed down for a variety of reasons. But I don't assume all ADN programs are like that -- in part, because we have another ADN program in town that provides a very good education.

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You haven't mentioned the specific outcomes of the studies that I asked you about earlier. If these are the major studies, why didn't you state what the specific outcomes were? What were the specific outcomes measured, and how were the outcomes measured? That is what I asked you to tell us. You say that nursing care provided by nurses with a BSN demonstrated superior patient outcomes in the studies.

Once again, if you're so interested, what's stopping you from reading the studies yourself? Why is it Boston's job to explain them to you?

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Once again, if you're so interested, what's stopping you from reading the studies yourself? Why is it Boston's job to explain them to you?

Once again, you seem to be a little defensive. On a public forum, where much discussion about this topic has taken place, with Bostonfnp a major contributor, this is not an inappropriate question to ask. I am interested in the public discussion on this thread. You appear to be uncomfortable with my question, as does Bostonfnp, hence trying to make it into "my problem." But that is not the issue here. Again, present the information publicly, so we can be informed and can discuss it - or is there a reason that this is not desired?

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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.

Then there seems to be good reason for people to stop insisting that BSN prepared nurses provide nursing care that results in superior patient outcomes versus ADN prepared nurses.

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Specializes in Adult Internal Medicine.
Then there seems to be good reason for people to stop insisting that BSN prepared nurses provide nursing care that results in superior patient outcomes versus ADN prepared nurses.

What is a good reason? We know that statistically and in aggregate they do; that's what a number of studies have shown. That doesn't mean that Nurse A, BSN is a "better" nurse than Nurse B, ADN. This is a simple concept to understand.

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Specializes in Adult Internal Medicine.
Again, present the information publicly, so we can be informed and can discuss it - or is there a reason that this is not desired?

Now that I have posted publicly (although the studies are all free and open to the public themselves) the information you wanted so we can all be informed, it is your turn to please cite and share your sources.

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Now that I have posted publicly (although the studies are all free and open to the public themselves) the information you wanted so we can all be informed, it is your turn to please cite and share your sources.

No, you didn't post the information I asked for. Read my posts again.

I am not speaking in defense of any studies as you are; there is no reason for me to provide a study or sources.

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Specializes in Nurse Leader specializing in Labor & Delivery.
No, you didn't post the information I asked for. Read my posts again.

I am not speaking in defense of any studies as you are; there is no reason for me to provide a study or sources.

You asked her

So yes, I ask again, of Bostonfnp, to tell us all the specific outcomes measured, and how, specifically they were measured, so that everyone on this forum can benefit from this information.

She provided just that - what were they measuring and how did they measure it? You did not ask the findings or conclusions of the studies. Although, I give enough credit to FNP that s/he would probably NOT post studies that don't confirm what she is asserting, so I'm guessing that the findings do confirm that outcomes are better with BSN prepared nurses.

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You asked her

She provided just that - what were they measuring and how did they measure it?

I asked for specifics.

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Specializes in Nurse Leader specializing in Labor & Delivery.
I asked for specifics.

And it looks like she provided them - the studies (at least the last two) looked at 30-day readmissions and inpatient mortality rates.

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And it looks like she provided them - the studies (at least the last two) looked at 30-day readmissions and inpatient mortality rates.

I asked for specific outcomes measured and how specifically they were measured. I am asking for detail.

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