I Need Yur Advice Please

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Ok I will try to make this brief.

I am a 45 yr old male looking at nursing as a second career.

I have been accepted to Columbia University for their ETP/Direct Entry MSN program, specifically, the FNP track

Tuition at this school is roughly 1200.00 PER credit hour so I would come out of this program approximately 100 thousand dollars in debt and would be an FNP making perhaps what 80K per year.

I have also been accepted to my local community college ADN program. This program is highly respected and the cost is trivial relative to Columbia.

At the same time, I have applied for an Earn as you learn program through a local non-profit hospital that is extremely highly respected. This program would pay all my tuition and books plus give me a stipend of 175.00 per week while I attendted the same ADN program referenced above. I feel that I have an excellent chance of being accepted into this program as well. The down side or the upside depending upon how one looks at it as that I would be bound to this hospital for three years after completeing the program.

Any advice on which way I shoul go? I am so confused!!!!

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Specializes in ICU, ER.

Go for one of the ADN programs. I know you will make more as a FNP, but to be $100k in debt in your late 40's (plus any other debt you already have) would scare me.

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Specializes in ICU.

Well, do you want to be a FNP or an RN? If you do the ADN program, do you think you'd want to do an MSN after?

I think it comes down to what you really want, and what it's worth for you. :)

Congrats on your acceptances!

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And that i the heart of the matter. I do not know what I want to be having never been an RN or an FNP.

It seems to me that the FNP would be a much less strenuous job and thus allowing me to practice for a longer period of time. However as an RN, I think I would have a much broader range of possibilities.

Then there is the issue of being an FNP with no RN experience? Advanced practive nurse never having been an RN....it just sounds a bit odd to me. I reckon that in a clinic, assessing patients and writing scrips it would not matter that I did not know how to insert a foley or perform proper trach care....

I have no other debt and actually have a pretty good cash cushion right now that is a remnant from my previous career. I am single and travel light maye carrying about three duffle bags worth of stuff wherever I go.......

As for the 100K in debt, I am told the Health Services Corps or something has loan forgiveness if I practice in an underseved community......

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It sounds like you have already decided to do the Columbia program. I make 80+k as a telephone triage Rn. So there are Rn jobs that pay OK that aren't strenuous too. Good luck.

Dexter

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Hey dexter thanks for your reply. Actually I have not decided 100 percent on Columbia........

I guess my big fear is what if I get in to school and figure out I do not like nursing after all? I will suffer a loss eating the forst semester of ADN school but the loss suffered at Columbia would be HUGE lol....

I dunno and yes I know there are RN's that make huge money......like I said above I am aware of the VERY broad spectrum of possibilities available to RN's and that I would not have narly as many possibilities as an FNP......

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Specializes in COS-C, Risk Management.

The experience of an RN is far beyond inserting foleys and proper trach care. Please don't confuse bedside nursing as being task-oriented. It's not about what you do in a day, it's about all that you know as you're doing it. For me personally, I wouldn't want an FNP caring for me who didn't have a solid nursing background. You really do need something to build upon, and it's not about skills. It's about chemistry, pathophysiology, microbiology, cellular biology, assessment skills, and a whole host of other building blocks of the RN mind that come into play as we perform our daily skills. You may have all the book-learnin' that you need, but will you know that the odor in the room is C. diff without some bedside experience? Or that the distinct odor of rancid grape juice emanating from your patient's wound is pseudomonas? Probably not.

If you ultimately want to be a Family Nurse Practitioner, I would highly recommend going the ADN route and getting some good, solid, med-surg experience first--preferably at someone else's dime as you outlined above. Then if you still want to pursue the FNP route, you can do an RN-FNP program without doing the BSN in the interim (or you can do the BSN if you want to take the long way around).

Best of luck to you.

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Thanks Kate :) its hard to refute your solid logic and its certainly difficult to question 18 years of experience :)

Thanks for the advice :)

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I will be honest. I don't have a huge passion or calling to be a nurse but as a man in my forties that wanted to retrain for a good paying job that has many areas to work in, nursing was a good fit for me. I came out of school with $20,000 in loans but I can work anywhere I want at a hundred different kinds of RN jobs. I can also get my tuition paid for by my hospital as I work towards a higher degree.

Dexter

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I also agree with those who advise that you start out with the ASN program. You can become a FNP after you have gained experience. It is not like you are excluding that possibility by making this choice. Also agree that the amount of debt is rather high for someone in your age range. Good luck with your decision.

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Specializes in ICU, LTACH, Internal Medicine.

I'm also a career-changer. Here in Michigan we now have a lot of former "Big Three" employees who got through direct-entry MSN programs and become NPs - mostly in Family practice. Most of them didn't have any experience in health care before. Now, frankly speaking, I have no idea how some of them are going to work with real patients in real life. Ambulatory medicine isn't as "mundane" as it is too often portrayed, and all that super-massive amount of clinical knowledge is supposed to be learned within four years - that's unimaginable. My GP's NP (working first year; 4-year direct MSN after 25 years on GM) offered me lunch so that I could tell her how I live with my food allergies - it turned out, she'd never seen a single patient with severe food allergy before. I saw pediatric NP straight from school who didn't know how to use percentile growth charts and was totally lost when another mom asked her about risks and benefits of vaccinations!

That's why I'm going to get good ol' solid BSN first, and then go to MSN (which, BTW, can be done while working part time). If you even got someone willing to pay for your ADN... I would chose it.

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Specializes in Cardio-Pulmonary; Med-Surg; Private Duty.

I'm in a similar life situation (41yo female, starting community college ADN program in the fall).

If I had those options available, I'd do the community college ADN. If you have enough of a cash cushion to pay your own tuition and support yourself, I'd go that route for the flexibility it will give you -- if there are no good jobs in your area when you graduate, you can move anywhere you want to get the job that you want. In my own situation (mortgage, kid, etc.), I'd do the Earn To Learn program -- I already know I'm not going to be moving for at least 8 years when my kid graduates, and I know I'm going to need a guaranteed income right away, so the sure-thing job would be a huge enticement (not to mention the no-cost education!).

What I'm doing is getting an ADN from the local community college. It's a laddered program, so I can sit for my LPN boards after the first two semesters, then work part-time as an LPN while I finish my two semesters of RN school. My *hope* is to land a part-time LPN job in a LTC facility, then have that morph into an RN job in the same facility. After getting some of that all-important "nursing experience" under my belt, I'll be in a much better position to get hired on in a local hospital, where new-grad openings are few and far between.

Good luck!

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I forgot to say, I'm also planning on using an employer's Tuition Reimbursement Program to fund my BSN and possibly my MSN, so all I'll have to pay for myself is my ADN. All of the big medical employers in this area offer Tuition Reimbursement.

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