Did you attend an RN to BSN program?

[GradStudent2012]

A group of my colleagues and I are graduate students and doing research on RN to BSN programs and how graduates of those programs feel about their preparation as RNs and experiences throughout their program. If you could answer a few questions by responding to this post, your input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!!

Which RN to BSN program did you attend? Not necessarily the school but what type of program.

What prerequisites were required for your program?

What is your overall feelings towards your nursing education in an RN to BSN program?

Do you feel like you were prepared adequately?

How long did your program take?

Do you think you got a good return on your investment?

Would you advise others to pursue an RN to BSN degree?

If you had it to do it all over again would you obtain your degree the same way? Why/Why not?

Please don't feel obligated to answer all the questions--any information you can provide can be great!

[elkpark]

I saw both your posts, and it looks like you pasted the "accelerated BSN" questions into this RN-to-BSN post but I'm not sure that's what you meant to do. I'll take a crack at your questions:

I did not attend an "accelerated" program at all; I attended a BSN completion program offered by the state uni nearest to my home.

There were no "prerequisites" required for the BSN completion program; however, at some point in the process you did have to complete all the general education requirements for a BS degree in addition to the nursing-specific courses. Some of us who already had some college had few or no extra courses we needed to take; some of my classmates had lots of extra, general education courses that they needed to take in order to complete the program.

Again, I'm assuming you mean to ask what my feelings are about my non-accelerated BSN completion program; although I particularly enjoyed the community/public health course and clinical and felt that I learned something worthwhile in those courses (since community/public health had not been covered at all in my original diploma program), overall I felt that the program was just a hoop I had to jump through (and pay for ) in order to be able to go to grad school. Apart from the community/public health content, there was nothing in the nursing coursework that was not presented, better, in my original diploma program (granted, I went to an excellent diploma school).

"Adequately prepared"? For what? I needed a BSN so I could apply to grad school, and the program accomplished that. I don't feel that it made me a "better" nurse in any meaningful sense.

My program took me two semesters of tull-time study ("full-time," for that program, being one evening and one full day a week). Lots of my classmates were taking a lot longer because of the general education courses they needed to complete; because I already had two years of college and transferable courses from my diploma school, I only needed the actual nursing courses.

In the sense that I needed a BSN and the program wasn't particularly expensive, yes. I used to joke (at the time), though, that I wished I could just mail in the check, get the degree, and skip the "middleman."

Again, your questions are about "accelerated" degrees but the title of the thread is about BSN completion programs. I would certainly encourage diploma and ADN graduates to complete a BSN, now more than ever, even if they don't plan on ever going to graduate school. It's worth it just for the wider variety of professional opportunities it makes available.

Yes -- my program was v. affordable and comparatively "painless." It was conveniently located and, at that time, there weren't any on-line programs. I probably still wouldn't do a distance program today -- not a big fan. I'm also v. glad that I started out at a good, strong diploma school, where I got an excellent education in nursing, rather than an ADN or pre-licensure BSN program.