Education vs Experience

Nurses General Nursing

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Hello Everyone,

I am a BSN student who is interested in pursuing a graduate degree in the future, probably a year after I graduate. I have read some posts and found that many here believe that an RN with that little experience has no place in Advanced Practice programs. This is where I disagree.

I believe that Nursing culture is shooting itself in the foot here, and here's my :twocents: cents why. A prospective doctor does not have to leave college after a bachelors degree to gain experience in the field of biology or chemistry before going on to Med school. A prospective college professor does not have to leave college after his bachelor's degree to get experience teaching at the grade school level. So WHY do so many believe that an RN has to leave school after their bachelor's degree to gain whatever many years of experience at the clinical level before going on to grad school?

:nono:I believe that it is counterproductive for the nursing profession as a whole to discourage students who wish to complete their education (MSN or beyond) before beginning clinical or other types of practice. You would think that the sensible thing to do is get your education, and THEN get your experience. Am I the only one who feels like this?

Experience is really important. Really. Like another poster said, MD's spend a ton of time in supervised practice (in residency alone!) before they are permitted to practice independently. NP programs and the like don't have near as much in the way of clinical hours to teach you things like what someone going into heart failure sounds like. Sure someone with a ton of education might be able to recite all the symptomology of CHF from memory, but have they heard the sounds the lungs/breathing make when it's starting enough times to think "uh oh, CHF"? That's not something you can learn from a book.

I see an NP all the time @ my doc's office, so I think advanced practice degree nurses are awesome, and they should be utilized more often than they are now. But I'll be honest-I wouldn't want to see an NP who had a degree but no clinical experience. The knowledge they need would not be complete, at least not in my mind.

Specializes in CRNA.

I used to think like this when I was still a student...when I actually started working however, I realized that there is no way I would survive in an advanced program without sufficient experience @ the bedside. Many BSN programs are skimpy on the clinical instruction as it is, and I agree with others that you will have a more difficult time finding employment once school ends. I will be attending a CRNA program in Sept with just under 3 years of ICU experience, and believe me, I think that's *just* enough as a minimum to feel comfortable in this setting---I would definitely advise you to get at least a year of clinical under your belt before continuing on--it will benefit you in more ways than one!

Specializes in CTICU.

Honestly, it amazes me that you get to be an NP after only 2 yrs of MSN. And I've been an RN for 12 years in very high acuity areas.

Medicine is not "advanced practice biology". NP is advanced practice nursing - how can your practice be "advanced" if you don't have any basic practice experience?

Honestly, without the experience I've gained in my RN years in monitoring, hemodynamics, pharm, etc etc... it would be hugely difficult to do well in my ACNP course, let alone when I graduate and am expected to practise.

Specializes in Critical Care,Recovery, ED.

Competent professional practice requires both education and hands on experience.

Most advanced nursing degree programs are designed to build on existing experience. Hands on experience can also be used to weed out those who are intellectually capable of doing the work but whose personality is ill suited to the professional role they are being educated for.

Nursing is a performing art.

I could read up all the swimming manuals, know the names of the strokes, and perform well on all the theory tests. That does not make me a strong swimmer. To do that requires taking the plunge and the willingness to gain skills.

In my area if you want to be an instructor in a university or technical school you need a MSN and 5 years recent experience.

otessa

Specializes in Nursing Professional Development.

It really pleases me to see that so many of my colleagues here on allnurses "get it."

:yeah:

As anyone who has ever actually BEEN a nurse knows, nursing is a practice discipline, not just an academic one. The knowledge required is both book knowledge and experiential knowledge. Practice alone does not make one an expert -- the person needs to have the theoretical knowledge as well. But theoretical knowledge alone is also not sufficient -- the person needs to learn how to apply that knowledge in actual situations.

I don't think a nurse needs several years of experience before going to graduate school -- but they do need to get sufficient experience to be competent in the clinical arena. Many nurses can handle graduate level work with only 1 or 2 years of clinical experience after their undergraduate work. Some need more. But I have never met one of the entry-level MSN grads who didn't need to do some significant "catch up" in the clinical arena before they could handle a job at the master's level. ... The "good ones" know that and get that experience before they think they are qualified for advanced level jobs.

For people in a hurry to go to graduate school, I recommend that they just take one class at a time for a few semesters -- while they work as a nurse to get the experienced need to be able to "put it all together" in the real world.

... and I say this as someone who worked for only 2 years as a staff nurse before quitting my job and becoming a full time graduate student at the age of 24. At the age of 26, I was teaching graduate school with students who had far more experience than I did. I survived, but I was forced to confront the realities of the fact that there are 2 kinds of knowledge necessary for expertise in nursing -- theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge. Both are important.

As for other disciplines ... we don't need to copy their mistakes. Also, many of those have more "practice" built into their educational programs (e.g. medicine). For others, such as the social sciences, languages, etc. ... the "practice of the discipline" IS academic in nature, not clinical-type practice. The teaching of class, writing papers, doind research ... the things the grad students do as students ... ARE the things that constitute the practice of those disciplines. There is far greater congruence between the activities of the grad students and the activities of the graduates than there is in nursing.

Nurses have to actually take the knowledge they generate/teach/learn and use it to take care of sick people and/or keep them well. That clinical practice component of the discipline gives us a different and greater responsibility to be sure that those who are leading the profession are both theoretically and clinical competent.

You see, this is why I wanted to post this thread. Because there are probably so many qualified competent students out there, who upon graduating can begin to gain the experience they need to become excellent practitioners, especially if the framework is there for them to get the experience. Because over time, education first and then experience = the same Outcome as experience first then education. The problem seems to be that many have the attitude of YOU HAVE TO PAY YOUR DUES. This is not the teamsters, this is nursing.

Specializes in Gerontology, nursing education.
You see, this is why I wanted to post this thread. Because there are probably so many qualified competent students out there, who upon graduating can begin to gain the experience they need to become excellent practitioners, especially if the framework is there for them to get the experience. Because over time, education first and then experience = the same Outcome as experience first then education. The problem seems to be that many have the attitude of YOU HAVE TO PAY YOUR DUES. This is not the teamsters, this is nursing.

:banghead: I'm sorry. I am tired of wasting my energy. To a student, perhaps it seems that there is an attitude that "YOU HAVE TO PAY YOUR DUES". People with education and experience have tried to convince you, politely, that it's NOT a matter of paying your dues, it's a matter of REALITY. You had your mind made up before you even posted this thread.

I suggested that you speak with your academic advisor and nursing instructors about your future plans. I suspect that you may have done that but did not get the answer you wanted. Sorry, you're not going to get the answer you wanted here, either.

But do what you want. I suspect you will, no matter what anyone else tries to say.

The problem seems to be that many have the attitude of YOU HAVE TO PAY YOUR DUES. This is not the teamsters, this is nursing.

I appreciate your perspective and understand where you are coming from. However, you didn't seem to address the feedback and opinions offered by others. What they said didn't sound like a chorus of knee-jerk, close-minded "you have to pay your dues" to me. It sounded like several were thoughtfully explaining why they saw experience as relevant and either necessary or highly preferred in general for nurses pursuing advanced practice... not because "I had to do it and so should you"... but because it's an ADVANTAGE to have experience.

there are probably so many qualified competent students out there, who upon graduating can begin to gain the experience they need and become excellent practitioners, especially if the framework is there for them to get the experience.

Perhaps the problem isn't so much with many nurses' belief that experience is necessary or highly recommended before pursuing advanced practice but perhaps its with the nature of nursing education. Perhaps if all school offered stronger clinical training as part of the schooling then maybe more nurses would support "skipping" working professionally as an RN before starting grad school. As it is, though, many programs only provide minimal, real-world clinical experience. For many, it's not until they start working full-time that they get the kind of repeated exposure to various diagnoses, symptoms, treatments, & tests that makes a nurse a nurse and not just someone with a nursing degree.

Think of someone who has earned their driver's license but never drove more than the minimum number of hours required to qualify for the license... and those hours almost all being on small, empty side streets? Would you encourage that person to immediately hop on the busy freeways of a crowded metropolis? Would you encourage the person to immediately start pursuing truck driving school, or becoming a bus driver? Would you encourage that person to immediately consider becoming a driving instructor? Or would you encourage them to get more practice driving, to become comfortable with it, to allow the chance for it to become almost second nature BEFORE pursuing something in driving that involved more critical conditions and/or more responsibility?

Specializes in Nursing Professional Development.
You see, this is why I wanted to post this thread. Because there are probably so many qualified competent students out there, who upon graduating can begin to gain the experience they need to become excellent practitioners, especially if the framework is there for them to get the experience. Because over time, education first and then experience = the same Outcome as experience first then education. The problem seems to be that many have the attitude of YOU HAVE TO PAY YOUR DUES. This is not the teamsters, this is nursing.

Who said anything about paying dues? I certainly never mentioned paying dues in my post. That is something you are fabricating. The people who responded to your originial post tried to point out valid theoretical and practical reasons why it is strongly recommended that newly licensed nurses get some practical experience in the field before moving into graduate education that focuses on leadership and advanced practice. If you have "dues paying" on your mind ... that is in YOUR mind. It isn't in the minds of those people who responded to your original post.

And note ... many of those professions such as medicine and law require graduate degrees for basic entry into practice. The students in those graduate programs are not studying to be leaders in their professions, they are taking courses to basic beginner-level practitioners. In nursing, people with graduate degrees are expected to be experts and to be prepared for leadership roles. That's not true for the physicians, lawyers, and college professors in other disciplines. Comparing nursing to those other professions is a bit like comparing apples to oranges -- both fruits, but definitely different in key ways.

This is not the teamsters, this is nursing.

precisely (re the bold).

this is nursing.

and you're still not getting it.

much luck to you, airforce.

i mean that.

leslie

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