Hospitalist CNS?

[Super Nurse JoshuA]

Hi!

I'm a RN with a little over 2 years of experience, and I'm about one year away from graduating from a RN to BSN program. I have started thinking about going to graduate school. I have mostly Med/Surg experience , and have noted that the University of Arkansas which is about an hour away from me has a Med/Surg CNS program. I thought about doing the ACNP, but I really don't think I would want to be over ICU/ER patients constantly which seems to be the reason for many of the education programs. Adult NP looks like it is suppose to function only in the primary care role. I like the ideal of the CNS also having a focus on research, being a change agent, and educating patients and nurses. When I finish the CNS program I think there is a good chance I would like to go into nursing education, but I also like the idea of functioning with prescriptive authority. . . and Arkansas is a state the recognizes prescriptive authority for CNS. . . so my questions are:

1) Could a Med/Surg (I believe it is now the Adult CNS certification. .) function in the role of a Hospitalist? I was on the NACNS website and it talked frequently about specialization. Would Adult(Med/Surg) be enough of a specialization? Or is it likely a program would admit me to Adult, but than request me to specialize (i.e. cardiac adult, urology adult, etc) ?

2) to those prepared is Med/Surg / Adult Health CNS: How was your program formatted? Were your 'Med/Surg' courses on the advance practice level individual driven spending most of your time on a speciality area of Med/Surg or did you receive a broad Med/Surg training?