Dnp?

Nearly all of the 80+ existing DNP programs are post-MSN. None of the DNP programs in the country are accredited yet (the first accreditation visits start later this year). The first accredited will be the programs that have been around a few years and have already graduated students.

At my University, we are waiting until we are formally accredited until we recruit for BSN graduates. We do not want to enroll BSN grads into an unaccredited program. In order to sit for Advanced Practice certification (NP, CNS, CNRA, CNM), you need to have graduated from an accredited program. Nearly all of our present post-MSN DNP students now are already certified as APNs.

Our CCNE site visit is in February 2009. After we are formally accredited, we plan on finalizing the BSN-DNP curriculum and enroll the first students for Fall 2010.

The next few years will be a big period of transition and change in graduate nursing education (especially for APN preparation).

Thank you! That is good to hear. I wasn't sure if there were benefits to doing the BSN-DNP versus BSN-MSN-DNP if DNP is the goal.

UVA Grad,

Are you sure none of the DNP programs are accredited yet? On Frontier's website they say their DNP program is.

CCNE must have moved up their first visits. CCNE told us this summer that they were starting to do site visits in November 2008.

I expect that more and more programs will be accredited in the next few years.

You can actually go directly go into a DNP with NO nursing experience.

DIRECT ENTRY DNP programs exist... just requires a BA/BS in any discipline plus some pre-reqs....