Does anyone see a huge difference between an ADN and a BSN prepared nurse, nursing skills wise? Very little of my BSN coursework have been utilized on the floor and to be honest, experienced Diploma nurses frequently possessed better skills. Sure, there was management and leadership skills, but unless that is your intent, I cannot see the point.
Personally, the nurse with desire and curiousity for her craft have always appeared to me better, at not only practical skills but also interpersonal. I acquired more debt but little else.
Is there collusion between the AACN and learning institutions pushing this agenda? Why is it so few nursing international bodies have adopted very little of this trend?
Higher education as a whole has been compromised where people are being convinced that everyone needs to go to college. The college educated bouncer at the strip club with a degree in jazz guitar didn't need that or $40,000 debt to stand at a strip joint door. Universities want money, the government wants indentured servitude via student loans and to diminish the public's purchasing power. Nursing is no exception. What makes a DNP in anesthesia for example more relevant than an MSN? Collectively, these folks just want students to spend more time and more money in school.
Regarding BSN and ASN, I most certainly use my nursing research class education from my BSN to read literature outside of nursing and to participate in my hospital's Research Committee.
Cocoa, how serious do you take these threads? It's just a discussion, an airing of views. People have different opinions which is what makes it a learning experience and fun. This inability to discuss politics or religion and now so many other subjects without acute judgement is quite detrimental to society. The thread is not about which degree is better or anything else but, Is it possible that the educational requirements are too much for nurses who may simply want to work the floor. Not about managerial potential but the floor.
At the end of day it's about patient care and no incidents, for me anyway. Some people are ambitious and some less so. I just don't like being taken for a ride especially from people whose goals are just that. My money is hard earned and I have experienced too many bureaucrats always with their hands out, regulating everyone but themselves.
Thank you Newmail, so much more articulate than I am. My point exactly!
I didn't read the thread; just your OP lol, but these sentiments are shared by people whose job it is to care about this stuff. i.e. Jordan Peterson, a former Harvard professor who said that people shouldn't go to college. They should go to trade schools because the integrity of The University has been compromised so much. The issue goes far beyond nursing.
A lot of this depends upon the school. Not all BSN programs are created equal. Some BSN programs have a few more nursing related classes that are not "fluff." They will have one or two courses specifically dedicated to pharmacology, an entire semester of pediatric nursing instead of a few weeks, one or two entire semesters of community nursing, a whole semester devoted to psych nursing, and some kind of senior practicum that is more in depth. They may require more advanced chemistry or math pre-reqs, as well as statistics, sociology, and psychology classes. The hardest pre-req I had to take was nutrition, which was chemistry based, not four food groups. I went to a brick and mortar nursing school at a very well thought of state university known for its nursing program. I don't recall taking any classes on nursing "theory" other than intro to nursing. Some of the RN to BSN programs (most online) sound like pure crap to me. They are designed to check a box and don't bring a lot of anything truly valuable to the student.
But the main difference between the two is that a BSN is a more broad education just like you get with any bachelor's degree, whether yours is in business, education, humanities, science, etc. You have to take more courses in English (literature and composition), government, history, maybe philosophy, general science classes totally unrelated to nursing, sometimes foreign language, or fine arts. It's not a degree specifically designed as preparing one for a trade or particular profession. It's not for everybody. It's not necessarily designed to make a better nurse out of someone, simply a person educated in things beyond nursing, which may or may not benefit the student as a person or a professional in measurable ways, but in ways unique to that person's development as a thinker and a human.
I don't believe there is any "conspiracy" involved. We are simply in a nursing glut, so those in the business of hiring can and do require more education of their nurses, if for no other reason than PR. The ADN is still highly valued in many markets, so no one is "forced" to get a BSN. If one doesn't want to relocate to those markets, then it becomes more necessary to go ahead and get the extra degree or wait out the glut until there is a shortage, in which case the desirable facilities will be clamoring for the services of the ADN. In a severe shortage, bonuses and other goodies will be offered. This is very cyclical.
Wait a second. I am so ignorant of the current educational system but the clouds might be clearing..
I thought all programs, both ADN and BSN, dedicated a full semester to pharmacology, peds, OB, psych, community based/public health, 2 or 3 med surg with critical care in the more advanced and a senior focus/practicum/preceptorship and then research and leadership in the last year of a BSN?? (They teach how to make an awesome run on sentence in the BSN programs, and comma abuse, apparently).
I think this is why I haven't completely understood posters claiming BSN nurses weren't clinically prepared when I see both types of grads coming out with little hands on experience. I mean how does any nursing student graduate without placing a cath and having sterile tech down? Why am I teaching 101? It's fine, I love our nurses and I love to teach, it's 1) the principle and 2) there is so much more to learn on the job that it just stacks the learning that much more).
ADN or BSN, the programs need to be comprehensive with abundant clinical hands on experience and exposure. People need to stop supporting those schools that are not. That's not going to happen and really it's the regulating bodies that need to standardize them with very high standards.
I have experienced too many bureaucrats always with their hands out, regulating everyone but themselves.
Avid Reader. I applaud your courage. You say this thread isn't about ADN versus BSN, it's about regulation overstepping its boundaries. So can we take it there?
I'm relatively new to this site. But one reason for coming here was to see if NURSING anywhere actually has a voice to fight back against the lunacy that clutters our profession. There were 24,000 new government regulations passed during the last administration, many of which impact our workplace in unimaginable ways. As each crazy policy gets handed down from on high, we faithfully suck it up and try to comply--because the hospital wants government funding and we want to keep our jobs.
Just one example is a mandatory fall risk score for every patient, even the 18-month-old who falls all day long. What are we going to do about that? Check a box that we warned the parents to keep their kid from getting hurt while he's a patient is in the ER? Insane. And the list goes on and on.
Regulation isn't about safety, it's about gate-keeping. There are over 1,100 things regulated by various states, everything from braiding hair to selling a yacht. But only about 60 of them are regulated by all the states. So that begs the question, if the other 1,000 things are so important, why aren't they regulated by all the states? The obvious answer is that they aren't important at all. Regulation is really about fees and control, and, yes, job creation for the regulators themselves––they are paid to regulate. The nit-pickier they make their regulations, the better they justify their existence. And the legal profession benefits because lawyers get hired to sort out all the ambiguity. The real irony is that the government's own research on regulation actually makes a strong case that over-regulation is hurting the economy by restricting access to various job markets. By forcing people to get expensive education which does not necessarily promote quality or safety, they are keeping able, willing workers out of the workforce.
Wait a second. I am so ignorant of the current educational system but the clouds might be clearing..
I thought all programs, both ADN and BSN, dedicated a full semester to pharmacology, peds, OB, psych, community based/public health, 2 or 3 med surg with critical care in the more advanced and a senior focus/practicum/preceptorship and then research and leadership in the last year of a BSN?? (They teach how to make an awesome run on sentence in the BSN programs, and comma abuse, apparently).
I think this is why I haven't completely understood posters claiming BSN nurses weren't clinically prepared when I see both types of grads coming out with little hands on experience. I mean how does any nursing student graduate without placing a cath and having sterile tech down? Why am I teaching 101? It's fine, I love our nurses and I love to teach, it's 1) the principle and 2) there is so much more to learn on the job that it just stacks the learning that much more).
ADN or BSN, the programs need to be comprehensive with abundant clinical hands on experience and exposure. People need to stop supporting those schools that are not. That's not going to happen and really it's the regulating bodies that need to standardize them with very high standards.
That is not a skill that only nurses can do. I am not even sure you can call that a skill;ino,that is a task.
There are CNA's and medical assistant's that can place catheters and Iv's in some states.
They only need a certain amount of hours to train.
Cocoa, how serious do you take these threads? It's just a discussion, an airing of views. People have different opinions which is what makes it a learning experience and fun. This inability to discuss politics or religion and now so many other subjects without acute judgement is quite detrimental to society. The thread is not about which degree is better or anything else but, Is it possible that the educational requirements are too much for nurses who may simply want to work the floor. Not about managerial potential but the floor.
At the end of day it's about patient care and no incidents, for me anyway. Some people are ambitious and some less so. I just don't like being taken for a ride especially from people whose goals are just that. My money is hard earned and I have experienced too many bureaucrats always with their hands out, regulating everyone but themselves.
Hi Avid Reader, I'm not disagreeing with you. I was just wondering what you were saying in your previous post (I was genuinely confused), and then I questioned what the British television program had to do with anything you mentioned previously. I do agree with the degree inflation and it being all about profits. I have worked with some exceptional nurses with 30 or 40+ years of experience and an associates degree who were being forced to go back to school for their BSN or risk losing their jobs to a new grad with a shiny BSN These experienced nurses didn't want to go back to school, they wanted to be floor nurses for the rest of their careers (which is truly amazing).
Avid Reader. I applaud your courage. You say this thread isn't about ADN versus BSN, it's about regulation overstepping its boundaries. So can we take it there?
I'm relatively new to this site. But one reason for coming here was to see if NURSING anywhere actually has a voice to fight back against the lunacy that clutters our profession. There were 24,000 new government regulations passed during the last administration, many of which impact our workplace in unimaginable ways. As each crazy policy gets handed down from on high, we faithfully suck it up and try to comply--because the hospital wants government funding and we want to keep our jobs...
Government money always comes with strings attached.
And I agree bureaucrats, middle management, administration and such need to shrink drastically in size. They use so many resources with so little return value (which makes them inefficient) and many times they are useless. They sit there playing with their thumbs trying to create work because they have nothing to do (because they're not necessary). These make-work practices have not served economies well.
I believe it stems from a fear of unemployment. People think a more efficient way of doing things destroys jobs (because an employer needs less people) and that a less efficient way of doing things creates jobs. But this just raises production costs and means less profits for the workers all around. And if there's a glut of employees then wages won't be competitive because there will be a worker who will accept that job for less than they should.
Those bureaucrats could find jobs doing something worthwhile. There's always work to be done as long as any human need remains unfulfilled.
Cocoa, even if you were disagreeing with me, it's your right and I believe that free speech is one of the most important things we have. I've worked with NPs and even PhDs that were incompetent and also others that were highly competent because their education made them interested and better able to understand the processes occurring. It's really all up to the individuals just we have to keep questioning and not taking things for granted.
These experienced nurses didn't want to go back to school, they wanted to be floor nurses for the rest of their careers (which is truly amazing).
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Cocoa Puff, I said, check out the television show called Apple Tree Yard. Really excellent viewing especially for women.