Why is community health nursing only part of BSN programs?

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live4today, RN

5,099 Posts

Specializes in Community Health Nurse.

North Carolina hires ADN nurses as Community Health Nurses. If they haven't already taken a Community Health Course, they are sent to one of the local Universities for the course post-hire. Some states aren't picky about what degreed nurse does what and others are. :)

I think it is wonderful to hire ADN nurses for community nursing jobs they should not be any less qualified than the BSN student even if the ADN students does not get any community nursing. I mean the BSN progam I am we got community nursing experience so far about 13 weeks worth and the last semester we are going to get about 4 more so we will have a total of about 17 weeks worth of community nursing. IF they CLAIM that 70% of the futures nursing care will be in the community/public health settings then were do they suppose the nurses will come from. Since there are more nurses who have either an ADN or Diploma then those who have a BSN. So I think hiring an ADN nurse is wonderful because they could be just as good as someone who has a BSN the initals should mean squat. States should not be picky at all about BSN/ADN they should be worried about being picky about the quality of care the nurse is providing.

zumalong

298 Posts

Specializes in surgical, neuro, education.

I think that having some community health rotation is turning into the rule rather than the exception. I even teach a 20 hour course to my LPN's each year. They do a rotation for several days at a outpt clinic, and spend time with a CHN (1 or 2 days). There has been such an increase in need for CHN's that more and more programs are including some form of community health in their curriculum.

I know here in upstate NY we utilize ADN's and even LPN's with experience for home care. I think that the public health nurse positions are the only ones where you have to have a BSN--but these positions are being filled with ADN, Diploma nurses with acute experience.

My biggest beef is when these agencies encourage new grads (at any level) to work in CH. I have worked in this field, and you really need at least several years of acute care under your belt to deal with everything you run into.

canoehead, BSN, RN

6,890 Posts

Specializes in ER.

I had more community experience in my 2 year ADN than in all of the BSN, but they did not have a separately labelled "community" course, they just added community experiences in to our work with various age groups and discussions of body systems/pathology. It worked better for me that way too.

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