Is it necessary to get experience as a Rn before NP?

[nurse2bnoob101]

I will be going to an absn program and was wondering if it is necessary to get RN experience before NP? Two schools of thoughts:

1) get rn experience pay down my loans, makes me more employable from what I have been told

2) go straight to NP program that means more years of experience at the job, the two jobs between RN and NP are completely different. I have more interests in working in specialties like Derm or psych.

What is the general consensus?

[Oldmahubbard]

The best NP programs find preceptors for their students. I do not have RN work experience and my preceptors did not have an issue with that. Well, one and it's kind of a funny story:

My preceptor at a long term care facility was awesome. She has over 30 years NP experience, including international. My clinical faculty instructor is also an awesome NP with 30 years NP experience in a really busy and hectic inner city urgent care. Clinical instructor came to rotation site to check up on me.

Clinical instructor to preceptor: "How if FullGlass doing overall?"

Preceptor: "About as expected. I've never had an NP student without RN experience and her lack of RN experience shows."

Clinical instructor: "Can you give me an example?"

Preceptor: "Well, she didn't know what [some acronym] meant."

Clinical instructor: "I see. Anything else?"

Preceptor: "I can't think of anything else."

Clinical instructor: "The evidence demonstrates that primary care NPs without RN work experience do just fine."

As I walked my clinical instructor to her car, she turned and said to me: "I have no idea what that acronym meant!" I laughed and said, "It's just a term they use in this facility."

Next semester, that preceptor accepted another NP student from our school who had no RN work experience and they got along swimmingly.

I did well in all my clinical rotations and my preceptors (NPs, MDs, and DOs) were all happy to be a reference for me.

I also got a great job within 2 months of starting my job search. Oh, and I got NINE job offers, all of them good.

Many of my classmates had no RN work experience and they all got good jobs quickly as well. Most of them received job offers from their clinical rotations. I did too, but could not accept due to Nurse Corps scholarship requirements and family obligations.

So those are more of my anecdotes.

Great, but in reality, aren't schools that provide preceptors in the small minority?

I went to well regarded brick and mortar school 20 years ago.

It was simply an accepted fact that one found one's own preceptors.

Most of the preceptors were people the student personally knew through their employment as RNs. Or at least, a friend of a friend.

I had a nightmarish experience with a preceptor I was required to find myself.

She taught me so much about psychiatry, because she was "crazy".

I filed a formal complaint against her with the BON. She was more than just a little eccentric.

This delayed my degree by 2 years.

I regret none of it now. What a convoluated path life can take to the same destination.

You were very, very lucky with your preceptors. There are nowhere near enough good ones.

[nurse2bnoob101]

thanks for the replies. Yeah I figure I will work 1 or 2 years max as a RN maybe in an urgent care since I have lots of connections there. I however am mainly going this route to become a NP. I originally tried to get into PA school and still am, but I need a back up option. I already got into absn program for nursing which is cheap. I am a second bachelors who majored in hard science so this is essentially a second chance for me.

I know a coworker who tried to get into PA school about 5 times now and she did not get in. She must be stubborn as a mule lol. I applied twice with no luck and anxious to move on with my life. Time is money and I am not getting any younger. If I was having a good income then I could afford to wait longer and try to improve my stats, but I don't. Plus I think any career where you have the ability to work independently has great negotiating power.

[FullGlass, BSN, MSN, NP]

Great, but in reality, aren't schools that provide preceptors in the small minority?

I went to well regarded brick and mortar school 20 years ago.

It was simply an accepted fact that one found one's own preceptors.

Most of the preceptors were people the student personally knew through their employment as RNs. Or at least, a friend of a friend.

I had a nightmarish experience with a preceptor I was required to find myself.

She taught me so much about psychiatry, because she was "crazy".

I filed a formal complaint against her with the BON. She was more than just a little eccentric.

This delayed my degree by 2 years.

I regret none of it now. What a convoluated path life can take to the same destination.

You were very, very lucky with your preceptors. There are nowhere near enough good ones.

Thank you. I don't know the % of schools that find preceptors, but plenty do. Applicants can easily find this information and only apply to schools that do find preceptors.

[blixkanaan, MSN, APRN]

This topic has been beaten to death but I feel obligated to comment where I can on this. First, a question. Do you honestly think that any RN experience could not be useful in primary care or psych? I think many would beg to differ and for me, most of my RN experience is in cardiac acute care but it still helped me become a solid FNP. Additionally, with the amount of variability in the quality and clinical rotations of ARNP programs, the least we can do as a profession is pressure prospective students to get RN experience as a minimal standard (since many schools won't). Students get admitted so easily because tuition profitable and is big business, nothing more. They care little about standards of their applicants and safety of the public. Also, the safety (of direct entry NPs in practice) has been studied and I believe there is only a single study done on this that says RN experience is irrelevant but all the other data out there favors RN experience before any NP role. And while some jobs may certainly not require some kind of RN or NP experience prior to hiring, they definitely prefer it. I get that there are many NPs out there with no RN experience, but they are minority. I think direct entry programs should be abolished and standards for admission should go up. My two cents.