BSN minimum requirement

Lisa - RN · Mar 10, 2001

With regards to the "Davis & Elkins" college, Weber State University in Ogden, Utah is very similar, i.e., they do not offer a straight 4-year BSN. Instead, applicants must finish a certain amount of pre-req's; show proof of completion of a Certified Nursing Assistant course and various community service; high SAT or ACT scores; application to ADN program during Winter semester - start the following Fall; two years later receive AS Degree (ADN); pass boards. A new application is generated for BSN admission with proof of Utah licensure. Then, and only then, can one start WSU's BSN program. Other BSN program requirements (besides licensure as a Registered Nurse) are high GPA, professional membership, letters of recommendation, etc.

This very subject (BSN entry level) was discussed at length throughout my ADN program. The main complaint from most students: Why pay more tuition/sacrifice more time to obtain a BSN when [utah] employers do not monetarily compensate for this additional degree? This was how the majority felt, evidenced by only a handful of my fellow classmates going on to WSU's BSN program.

Maybe this is a subject for another post, but I am curious if other regions/states offer additional compensation for an RN with a BSN.

I'd appreciate your input!

Lisa

Lisa - RN · Mar 10, 2001

With regards to the "Davis & Elkins" college, Weber State University in Ogden, Utah is very similar, i.e., they do not offer a straight 4-year BSN. Instead, applicants must finish a certain amount of pre-req's; show proof of completion of a Certified Nursing Assistant course and various community service; high SAT or ACT scores; application to ADN program during Winter semester - start the following Fall; two years later receive AS Degree (ADN); pass boards. A new application is generated for BSN admission with proof of Utah licensure. Then, and only then, can one start WSU's BSN program. Other BSN program requirements (besides licensure as a Registered Nurse) are high GPA, professional membership, letters of recommendation, etc.

This very subject (BSN entry level) was discussed at length throughout my ADN program. The main complaint from most students: Why pay more tuition/sacrifice more time to obtain a BSN when [utah] employers do not monetarily compensate for this additional degree? This was how the majority felt, evidenced by only a handful of my fellow classmates going on to WSU's BSN program.

Maybe this is a subject for another post, but I am curious if other regions/states offer additional compensation for an RN with a BSN.

I'd appreciate your input!

Lisa

timonrn · Mar 10, 2001

Here in MN (the MNA contract) gives us about .80 more an hour! Hopefully will change w/ new contract in May.

timonrn · Mar 10, 2001

Here in MN (the MNA contract) gives us about .80 more an hour! Hopefully will change w/ new contract in May.

Charles S. Smith, RN, MS · Mar 10, 2001

I have been silent on this issue up until now primarily because i wanted to see when the vitriolics would subside and some real substance might emerge.....At this juncture in our professional development, there really is no difference in how the 3 levels of RNs enact their roles. We all take the same boards, practice the same way and become whatever kind of nurse we choose. The roles of nurses have been compressed to a level of mediocrity that is astounding. We are the backbone of the healthcare infrastructure, yet be behave as its slaves. We are slaves to tasks..who can do the best and most complicated tasks with the greatest efficiency and accuracy. That is not education really...that is training. Our collective role must become the central focus of the healthcare debate and we, the ones at the bedside (yes, I am still a clinician) must enact that focus. Clearly, the role of the RN is in question and left to those outside of bedside nursing, that role will never change. Collective education is one part of the process. The outcome of education, and especially advanced education, is not to get a better job. Any one of us with creativity and perserverance can excel with whatever we have at our disposal. The outcome of education is expanding mindfulness, not just knowledge. Education offers us (or surely should) the space to tap into our inner sources of power to create whatever job, work, future we choose. Use education as the springboard to learn about things, yes, but more importantly, to learn about yourself. Use education in invest in your LIFE, not your job. There are many of us in dead end jobs...and very few of us who are creating the nursing futures we truly deserve. The LIFE we choose certainly transcends the tasks we do as nurses...

best regards to all

chas

Charles S. Smith, RN, MS · Mar 10, 2001

I have been silent on this issue up until now primarily because i wanted to see when the vitriolics would subside and some real substance might emerge.....At this juncture in our professional development, there really is no difference in how the 3 levels of RNs enact their roles. We all take the same boards, practice the same way and become whatever kind of nurse we choose. The roles of nurses have been compressed to a level of mediocrity that is astounding. We are the backbone of the healthcare infrastructure, yet be behave as its slaves. We are slaves to tasks..who can do the best and most complicated tasks with the greatest efficiency and accuracy. That is not education really...that is training. Our collective role must become the central focus of the healthcare debate and we, the ones at the bedside (yes, I am still a clinician) must enact that focus. Clearly, the role of the RN is in question and left to those outside of bedside nursing, that role will never change. Collective education is one part of the process. The outcome of education, and especially advanced education, is not to get a better job. Any one of us with creativity and perserverance can excel with whatever we have at our disposal. The outcome of education is expanding mindfulness, not just knowledge. Education offers us (or surely should) the space to tap into our inner sources of power to create whatever job, work, future we choose. Use education as the springboard to learn about things, yes, but more importantly, to learn about yourself. Use education in invest in your LIFE, not your job. There are many of us in dead end jobs...and very few of us who are creating the nursing futures we truly deserve. The LIFE we choose certainly transcends the tasks we do as nurses...

best regards to all

chas

MollyJ · Mar 11, 2001

Originally posted by Charles S. Smith, RN, MS:
...Collective education is one part of the process. The outcome of education, and especially advanced education, is not to get a better job. Any one of us with creativity and perserverance can excel with whatever we have at our disposal. The outcome of education is expanding mindfulness, not just knowledge. Education offers us (or surely should) the space to tap into our inner sources of power to create whatever job, work, future we choose. Use education as the springboard to learn about things, yes, but more importantly, to learn about yourself. Use education in invest in your LIFE, not your job. There are many of us in dead end jobs...and very few of us who are creating the nursing futures we truly deserve. The LIFE we choose certainly transcends the tasks we do as nurses...

best regards to all
chas

Thanks for your comments which tap some of my own feelings. I am also a nurse with a BSN completion, MSN. I started on my BSN when the first layoffs in nursing were occurring (c. 1983) and I knew I wanted more control over where I might end up working if hospital nursing crashed. But a good BSN and MSN program should change your life and your thinking. "Expanding mindfulness" is a good word for it. Though my MSN has not greatly added up to more money for me (alas) it has added up to more satisfaction, over all. As Dr. Seuss said, "Oh, the places you'll go!"

I am saddened that my one previous post in this thread has caused some folks some consternation and hurt feelings. I am the person that said that the BSN allows you to walk forward from the bedside when and if you choose to do so. Perhaps "away" would have been a better word than forward. Here is what I mean by that. MANY of my BSN completion colleagues were there to complete a BSN SO THAT they could go on to NP school, get a management or nurse educator job in their community hospital, teach in their beloved local nursing ed program. But a necessary stop on the way was their BSN completion. BSN grads don't have to buff up their credential to go on to the next step. They are there. It is simply more efficient. Now I also know many BSN's who are bedside nurses; that's where they are and where they want to be. They are good at it. My best, all time, most fantastic bedside nurse that I met in my career was a BSN, MSN who wanted nothing more than to be a bedside nurse and we would all hope to have her as our nurse if we were sick. Baccalaureate programs understand that if they hope to serve their communities they MUST turn out bedside nurses but they seek to turn out nurses with the wider framework, the awareness that is afforded by baccalaureate education that includes liberal arts foundation and research and theory basics in nursing. You know I am constantly aware that one of my _options_ with my education is to return to the bedside. Advanced education does not preclude bedside nursing and in fact, Chas, I hope your would agree that it could well enrich it. Candidly let me tell you that the siren call of the bedside is everpresent in my life, too. In summary, the BSN gives you options and one of them will always be the bedside.

But, Chas, you also echoed one of my points in my post. I said that it was sometimes hard to quantify what the BSN brings to your practice and that until we could quantify it in a way that would make people want it sufficient to be the entry of level into practice that I forecast we would continue to muddle around. Anyhow, your quote above synopsizes what you think advanced education brings. I agree, and beautifully stated. BB posters, your thoughts? Additionally, nurses, please just re-read the quote and sit with it a few moments. Don't rush to defend what your truly excellent ADN or diploma programs did. Trust me. We start with this assumption: ADN and diploma programs have the capacity to educate excellent bedside nurses and they do. But they have you for two or three short precious years. Trust also that with two more years, BSN programs have something to offer their students that *may not* be as visible or quantifiable as technical skills. Especially those of us that are BSN completion students may be able to identify what the BSN added to our practice. Was it alike or different from Chas writes above? One poster earlier said that it was computer skills. Is that what you're willing to say you got from your BSN? BSN grads, what do you see as the differences in your function? Please no generalizations or slams. If we are going to say that this degree has an appreciable difference, we have to be able to say what it was. Since I am a BSN completion and serve as my own control ;-), I can say that the difference include thinking and perspective (Chas's mindfulness), use of frameworks to guide me through new and atypical situations and a much greater appreciation of how illness affects families and systems (some of this latter factor might have been developmental) to name a few. I also got better at knowledge acquisition.

Your thoughts?

MollyJ · Mar 11, 2001

Originally posted by Charles S. Smith, RN, MS:
...Collective education is one part of the process. The outcome of education, and especially advanced education, is not to get a better job. Any one of us with creativity and perserverance can excel with whatever we have at our disposal. The outcome of education is expanding mindfulness, not just knowledge. Education offers us (or surely should) the space to tap into our inner sources of power to create whatever job, work, future we choose. Use education as the springboard to learn about things, yes, but more importantly, to learn about yourself. Use education in invest in your LIFE, not your job. There are many of us in dead end jobs...and very few of us who are creating the nursing futures we truly deserve. The LIFE we choose certainly transcends the tasks we do as nurses...

best regards to all
chas

Thanks for your comments which tap some of my own feelings. I am also a nurse with a BSN completion, MSN. I started on my BSN when the first layoffs in nursing were occurring (c. 1983) and I knew I wanted more control over where I might end up working if hospital nursing crashed. But a good BSN and MSN program should change your life and your thinking. "Expanding mindfulness" is a good word for it. Though my MSN has not greatly added up to more money for me (alas) it has added up to more satisfaction, over all. As Dr. Seuss said, "Oh, the places you'll go!"

I am saddened that my one previous post in this thread has caused some folks some consternation and hurt feelings. I am the person that said that the BSN allows you to walk forward from the bedside when and if you choose to do so. Perhaps "away" would have been a better word than forward. Here is what I mean by that. MANY of my BSN completion colleagues were there to complete a BSN SO THAT they could go on to NP school, get a management or nurse educator job in their community hospital, teach in their beloved local nursing ed program. But a necessary stop on the way was their BSN completion. BSN grads don't have to buff up their credential to go on to the next step. They are there. It is simply more efficient. Now I also know many BSN's who are bedside nurses; that's where they are and where they want to be. They are good at it. My best, all time, most fantastic bedside nurse that I met in my career was a BSN, MSN who wanted nothing more than to be a bedside nurse and we would all hope to have her as our nurse if we were sick. Baccalaureate programs understand that if they hope to serve their communities they MUST turn out bedside nurses but they seek to turn out nurses with the wider framework, the awareness that is afforded by baccalaureate education that includes liberal arts foundation and research and theory basics in nursing. You know I am constantly aware that one of my _options_ with my education is to return to the bedside. Advanced education does not preclude bedside nursing and in fact, Chas, I hope your would agree that it could well enrich it. Candidly let me tell you that the siren call of the bedside is everpresent in my life, too. In summary, the BSN gives you options and one of them will always be the bedside.

But, Chas, you also echoed one of my points in my post. I said that it was sometimes hard to quantify what the BSN brings to your practice and that until we could quantify it in a way that would make people want it sufficient to be the entry of level into practice that I forecast we would continue to muddle around. Anyhow, your quote above synopsizes what you think advanced education brings. I agree, and beautifully stated. BB posters, your thoughts? Additionally, nurses, please just re-read the quote and sit with it a few moments. Don't rush to defend what your truly excellent ADN or diploma programs did. Trust me. We start with this assumption: ADN and diploma programs have the capacity to educate excellent bedside nurses and they do. But they have you for two or three short precious years. Trust also that with two more years, BSN programs have something to offer their students that *may not* be as visible or quantifiable as technical skills. Especially those of us that are BSN completion students may be able to identify what the BSN added to our practice. Was it alike or different from Chas writes above? One poster earlier said that it was computer skills. Is that what you're willing to say you got from your BSN? BSN grads, what do you see as the differences in your function? Please no generalizations or slams. If we are going to say that this degree has an appreciable difference, we have to be able to say what it was. Since I am a BSN completion and serve as my own control ;-), I can say that the difference include thinking and perspective (Chas's mindfulness), use of frameworks to guide me through new and atypical situations and a much greater appreciation of how illness affects families and systems (some of this latter factor might have been developmental) to name a few. I also got better at knowledge acquisition.

Your thoughts?

Charles S. Smith, RN, MS · Mar 11, 2001

Molly..thanx for your reply. My view of education in general and nursing education in particular has evolved over time to a fundamental understanding (for me) that life-long learning avails one of the opportunity to exercise choices. Education unlocks perspective, allows us to creatively engage in generative activites for our own individual futures. Formal education, taken with the seriousness it deserves, prepares the individual with unique options. Taken frivolously or used for a specific outcome may impose constraints that block the learning of new perspectives, that in turn limit our choice options in life. On the pragmatic side, we all entered nursing school to become nurses. In nursing school we learned specific tasks that allow us to wear the mantle of "the nurse" and were socialized to a prescribed nursing role. Up to this point, this type of education has served us. My view is, however, that the ROLE of the professional nurse must now be revisited and recreated. There will always be a need for patient care tasks and those can be taught and taught well (our history of task education is rich). But, given the emergence of serious crises in healthcare financing, our overall economy, the latest statistics on the nursing shortage, the looming prospect that there will not be enough nurses to take care of you and me when we need care, and the restlessness of the current RN force, all beg the question "are we missing something here?". My view is that we are indeed missing something. We now have the challenge to create what the professional nursing ROLE must look like for the future. The timing has never been better and the impetus for change has never been as compelling. I appreciate your continued dialogue..

best regards

chas

Charles S. Smith, RN, MS · Mar 11, 2001

Molly..thanx for your reply. My view of education in general and nursing education in particular has evolved over time to a fundamental understanding (for me) that life-long learning avails one of the opportunity to exercise choices. Education unlocks perspective, allows us to creatively engage in generative activites for our own individual futures. Formal education, taken with the seriousness it deserves, prepares the individual with unique options. Taken frivolously or used for a specific outcome may impose constraints that block the learning of new perspectives, that in turn limit our choice options in life. On the pragmatic side, we all entered nursing school to become nurses. In nursing school we learned specific tasks that allow us to wear the mantle of "the nurse" and were socialized to a prescribed nursing role. Up to this point, this type of education has served us. My view is, however, that the ROLE of the professional nurse must now be revisited and recreated. There will always be a need for patient care tasks and those can be taught and taught well (our history of task education is rich). But, given the emergence of serious crises in healthcare financing, our overall economy, the latest statistics on the nursing shortage, the looming prospect that there will not be enough nurses to take care of you and me when we need care, and the restlessness of the current RN force, all beg the question "are we missing something here?". My view is that we are indeed missing something. We now have the challenge to create what the professional nursing ROLE must look like for the future. The timing has never been better and the impetus for change has never been as compelling. I appreciate your continued dialogue..

best regards

chas

carolk · Mar 11, 2001

Originally posted by Lburns:
It is my firm belief that the minimum requirement for nursing should be a BSN. We want to be accepted as a profession, yet we allow 2 year programs to dominate the field. Now I went to a 2 year program and will be finishing my BSN this semester. My school did a great job preparing me for "tasks" of nursing, but oh, it is so much more than that. Many other countries have moved or are moving towards 4yr degree minimums and the US needs to stay atop in this competative field. The nursing shortage will not always be here and it is to your advantage to get your degree now. The 2 yr programs will make a great footstep in the years to come, but the 4yr degree will become the RNs of the future. As nurses move into the 21st century we need to pull together to demonstrate our power as a profession, the only way to do this is to have strong, educated nurses in not just bedside tasks but critically thinking, politics, research and community health. Think about it, comments welcome.

I am a 2 year RN and proud of it. I have worked for 28 years in nursing and still see the BSN as overly glorified. BSN's don't know what a real nurse does nor do they want to know. Willing to dish out orders but not know how to do the task yourselves. I am working on my bachelor degree but never in nursing. I watched a BSN steri strip a laceration recently, she went parralel to the laceration instead of closing it! Educated, guess that is a matter of opinion. The nursing shortage will always be here, sometimes worse than others. Good luck.

carolk · Mar 11, 2001

Originally posted by Lburns:
It is my firm belief that the minimum requirement for nursing should be a BSN. We want to be accepted as a profession, yet we allow 2 year programs to dominate the field. Now I went to a 2 year program and will be finishing my BSN this semester. My school did a great job preparing me for "tasks" of nursing, but oh, it is so much more than that. Many other countries have moved or are moving towards 4yr degree minimums and the US needs to stay atop in this competative field. The nursing shortage will not always be here and it is to your advantage to get your degree now. The 2 yr programs will make a great footstep in the years to come, but the 4yr degree will become the RNs of the future. As nurses move into the 21st century we need to pull together to demonstrate our power as a profession, the only way to do this is to have strong, educated nurses in not just bedside tasks but critically thinking, politics, research and community health. Think about it, comments welcome.

I am a 2 year RN and proud of it. I have worked for 28 years in nursing and still see the BSN as overly glorified. BSN's don't know what a real nurse does nor do they want to know. Willing to dish out orders but not know how to do the task yourselves. I am working on my bachelor degree but never in nursing. I watched a BSN steri strip a laceration recently, she went parralel to the laceration instead of closing it! Educated, guess that is a matter of opinion. The nursing shortage will always be here, sometimes worse than others. Good luck.