I have been a RN since 1989, graduated with a ASN. Since that time I worked in ICU, Open heart surgery, PICU, Med/Surg and Behavioral Health. I have had the pleasure to have worked as a Nurse Executive only to be told after 25 years to get a BSN. I have a BS in Public Policy and Organizational Leadership and Master of Arts in Theology/Counseling. I asked my employee why after working 13 years a their Executive Nurse on Med/Surg/Peds that they thought I needed a BSN. No answer just demands or lose my job. I told them to stuff it! At 57 I was not going back to school for a BSN when it would only achieve increasing my debt ratio.
Since then I haven't been able to hire on anywhere but a Nursing Home. Let me tell you it is a blessing to work in geriatrics, yet the BSN's that work there are clueless, needing alot of training and retraining which I don't mind doing. It just saddens me that at the end of my career Nursing still has its quirks like they did in the 80's. Remember the period when medical assistants where hired to work in ICUs? That fiasco lasted less then a year.
God bless all of you who have had to face this new fiasco of BSN only apply. I am wondering who agrees with BSN only need to apply?
After 39 yrs of nursing with my little stupid AS I've never had a problem getting a job....the problem anywhere is when you are considered stupid because life got in the way and the opportunity to go back to school to earn a "more lucrative" degree didn't earn more than .25 or maybe .50 per hour.
Many people here have dismissed the idea that employers are telling people of 30+ years experience to get a BSN or get out, but it seems more and more people are coming here to relate exactly that experience.
I absolutely agree that there are more and more of these posts. I disagree that many here have dismissed that; from my read many have dismissed that this happened "suddenly".
You make a lot of great points about the lack of response. Perhaps some of this is financial resources. Perhaps some of it is the fact that many of the diploma and ADN nurses are not actively involved in nursing/medical research (I have heard many here heralding the argument that research is "fluff" in the BSN curriculum). With the number of experienced nurses as passionate about this issue as demonstrated here, there is no reason why a rebutting study has not been conducted/published.
Because they wanted to....I don't understand why should it matter "what kind of masters" unless you are a NP. Are we (the collective we) saying now that the only good masters degree is a masters in nursing degree?
It doesn't make much sense to pursue, let's say, a master's in English literature when you are a nurse and you want to stay a nurse. To answer your question not posed to me,yes, I guess I am saying the only degree that matters professionally is an MSN or an MPH. If you want to go up the administrative track, an MBA might be acceptable.
Really, what needs to happen, is they just need to tweak the ADN program a tad and the credit hours alone in conjunction with pre-reqs would be enough to have a BSN.
It's not enough to have just 120 credit hours; you must have 60 gen Ed and 60 in a major. No community college is approved to confer bachelor's degrees. They just aren't, although some partner with 4-year universities; however the BSN degree has the 4-year institution's name on it.
Specializes in Parkinson's, stroke. elderly care rehab.
In the UK, we have been following the US model of nurse 'education', and having read everything posted above, it saddens but confirms me in my belief that there is a fundamental flaw in the reasoning behind it.
If a nurse wants to pursue higher education, then that's a good thing. I would never dissuade anyone who wanted to deepen their knowledge. Any learning experience, in any subject, that promotes deeper thinking has to be beneficial. However...
What guarantees are there that such education, provided by people who may have relatively little bedside experience, will improve the experienced practitioner's skills?
In the UK, we used to have 'registered clinical nurse tutors', who brought higher level knowledge and skills directly to the student nurse at the bedside. They did themselves out of their jobs by allowing themselves to be allocated more and more to the classroom, as cheaper versions of their chalk and talk colleagues.
Now we're an all-graduate profession over here, we on the floor are left with filling in the gaps between theory and practice - sometimes, a painful process.
I repeat, in a slightly different form, what I posted earlier: how can classroom learning ever compete with bedside experience, backed up with academic support? And how can we respect 'teaching' from individuals with limited practical experience of the subject?
It's not enough to have just 120 credit hours; you must have 60 gen Ed and 60 in a major. No community college is approved to confer bachelor's degrees. They just aren't, although some partner with 4-year universities; however the BSN degree has the 4-year institution's name on it.
Community Colleges in my California will be offering baccalaureate degrees. The Governor just signed the bill. Cal State Universities are already offering the DNP (a Doctorate xouldw previously only be awarded by the UC system).
Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.
I absolutely agree that there are more and more of these posts. I disagree that many here have dismissed that; from my read many have dismissed that this happened "suddenly".
You make a lot of great points about the lack of response. Perhaps some of this is financial resources. Perhaps some of it is the fact that many of the diploma and ADN nurses are not actively involved in nursing/medical research (I have heard many here heralding the argument that research is "fluff" in the BSN curriculum). With the number of experienced nurses as passionate about this issue as demonstrated here, there is no reason why a rebutting study has not been conducted/published.
Sent from my iPhone.
I, personally never said research was fluff...I actually had research in my ASN program. However there are fluff courses that are not necessary to the bedside nurse in the RN BSN program.
Why have I not done a study? I wish I had the money....if only to satisfy my curiosity.
Why has there not been a study done? Why on earth would an academic institution or someone who makes their living off of writing books for the academic institutions promote a study that doesn't promote more education? Of course the studies will reinforce their agenda.
That would be like the tobacco companies publishing all of those studies they years ago about how bad cigarettes are for you...it would have bankrupted them. They knew and hid it...why? Money.
I think the BSN should be entry mandate. I think anyone entering now should go BSN route OR start the RN BSN bridge immediately. I am NOT AGAINST THE BSN!!!! I am AGAINST THE MISTREATMENT OF SEASONED NURSES.
If the facility is a Magnet Hospital then they have to have BSN nurses to maintain that status. My guess is that this is the case in this particular ad. The other option is that it is a role that will offer administrative advancement and they require a BSN to do so.
Specializes in Clinical Research, Outpt Women's Health.
84k for an MSN? Insanity. 20 to 40k to get a BSN so you can work at the bedside? Something stinks. I am shocked at how many are buying into it.
Luckily, I never had a desire to work at the bedside.
If I had to get my BSN to be able to get any kind of nursing job with 21 years of experience then I think I would probably get that degree in something else. Not sure what yet, but it certainly has the wheels turning.
The debt people are willing to incur really blows my mind.
I disagree that Community Colleges have anything near the lobbying force or the deep pockets of entities like the IOM, the ANA and related groups that think the same way. When the first Aiken study came out in 2003, community colleges had next to no resources to rebut their assertions and are massively outspent in public relations and media strategy.
I'm not talking about "public relations and media strategy." In this issue, it matters v. little what the public thinks. I'm talking about lobbying at the state legislature level, which is where any changes in nursing licensure have to happen, and, believe me, community colleges are v. popular with state legislatures and have a tremendous amount of clout there. I've seen this first-hand. It's going to be v. hard to convince any state legislature to eliminate the state's community college ADN programs, and the state lege couldn't care less what the ANA or AACN think (esp. since the vast majority of state legislators have no clue about how nursing licensure works, to begin with). The most that is likely to happen, IMO, is to create some kind of seamless pathway for community college ADN grads to move into state uni BSN completion program, or some kind of collaborative BSN hybrid program between the CCs and state unis.
The ANA, AACN, IOM, and others have been trying for decades to make the BSN the entry level for nursing licensure, and they are no closer to making that happen than they were 40 years ago (except for the brief experiment in North Dakota that didn't last). ADN programs are not only going strong, new ones are still being opened around the country. Given that, how do you draw the conclusion that those organizations are much more powerful that the ADN lobby?
Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.
If the facility is a Magnet Hospital then they have to have BSN nurses to maintain that status. My guess is that this is the case in this particular ad. The other option is that it is a role that will offer administrative advancement and they require a BSN to do so.
That is NOT true...the staff does NOT need to ALL be BSN graduates and the Magnet stamp of approval means little to the public. It is an expensive process that really has little to no impact on patient care of nurses in MOST facilities.
Magnet does not define what percentage of RN’s must have a BSN. The Institute of Medicine (IOM), Future of Nursing Initiative recommended that organizations should strive to achieve 80% BSN prepared nurses by 2020.
Just more subjective interpretation by some management.
BSN only will decrease the number of nurses. Our degrees will become more valuable. Salaries will have to go up. Maybe the North Dakota experiment failed because no one was willing to pay enough to nurses to stay in a state, which at that time, was very poor.
Rntr
323 Posts
After 39 yrs of nursing with my little stupid AS I've never had a problem getting a job....the problem anywhere is when you are considered stupid because life got in the way and the opportunity to go back to school to earn a "more lucrative" degree didn't earn more than .25 or maybe .50 per hour.