Is it true that a BSN will be mandatory soon?

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An instructor of mine (I'm in another state) stated that she recently went to a national educators conference and that they were saying that within the next several years in NY it would be mandatory to have your BSN. Does anyone know anything about this? Thanks

Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.

Well, if a person has all of their prereqs then they would only need 26 credits to bridge right?

*** In that particular program yes It is one of many, others are different

Are you working towards your grad degree? BSN?

*** I finished an RN to BSN program through a state university in June of this year. IMO It was a waste of money and time. Don't get me wrong, I am glad I got a bachelors degree, I just wish it could have been in a more-useful-for nursing field.

Are you angry?

*** Not at all. A little frustrated that you persisted in talking about 78 bridge credits and very large amounts of money AFTER I had pointed out that the bridge program classes where not even mentioned in post 1057.

Maybe I'm misreading your tone. You seem conflicted about higher education

*** Not even a little bit conflicted. This is not a discussion about higher education. It is about requiring a BSN degree for RN license. Not the same thing at all. I consider the BSN degree to mostly just fluff and would prefer to see nurses wishing to pursue higher education study useful subjects. Like say for example nurses who want to go into administration study health care admin, or wannabe managers study management, or say wannabe CRNAs study biochemistry (for example). I looked at a lot of RN to BSN programs. They where mostly fluff IMO.

and have a chip on your shoulder.

*** That may be your perception. I disagree.

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I agree that there were quite a few fluff classes. There were also many hoops to jump through. I don't think it ever ends. The same can be said about many other fields where not everything required in the curriculum applies directly to the job. I majored in Electrical Engineering first. I felt the same way when I had to take some liberal arts classes. I still think that the entry level for professional nursing should be at the BSN level. This will put us more on the same level, education-wise as others in health care. Nursing should be elevated as a profession, not a vocation.

Peace

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To PMFB-RN, I agree with you whole heartedly. Nurses who want to be managers, should have a management degree. I have met some nursing managers who were lazy, totally incompetent, and couldn't manage a fly in the room. Easy management is bad management and we all know that nursing needs good managers. Put a BS in Management on their plate.

Look at the CEOs in the hospitals. They don't have a medical degree or even a PhD. It is mostly a Bachelors degree of sorts and sometimes a masters in the medical realm. We've always had or beef with the way they treat the nursing profession and that's because of education or how they have been trained. Again a BS in management in the medical field might help.

I agree with a lot of you when you complain about advance degrees in nursing. It is a lot of fluff that doesn't help you in the end. Being married to a college professor, I have a little insight. Universities love to make you take a course over becasue it isn't quite the course they offer or they add useless courses to your curriculum to get more and more money out of the student.

The way I see it is this....the majority of the STUFF I learned about nursing wasn't in the classroom but on the floor - day in and day out. Making RNs get an advanced degree will come back and bite them in the butt and their butt is almost gone.

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This is totally regionally. The RN's in my town have a tough time finding a job, considering there are 2 RN programs (ADN & BSN) and they are dumping tons of graduates on the market. The hospitals around here are requiring the ADN's to get their BSN and BSN's outnumber ADN's 5 to 1.

really? specifically what city is this? i'm going to test your position by actually

calling hospitals and verifying that my adn and experience just aren't what they are looking for. instead, they are looking for a bsn.

i'll report the results right back here. so please name the city that a bsn is required in order to get a job.

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really? specifically what city is this? i'm going to test your position by actually

calling hospitals and verifying that my adn and experience just aren't what they are looking for. instead, they are looking for a bsn.

i'll report the results right back here. so please name the city that a bsn is required in order to get a job.

Check out this link to MD Anderson...these are current jobs that are available for RN's. Make sure you scroll down to the "Educational Requirement"...they want either a BSN or a MSN...here's the link.

http://www.indeed.com/q-M.D.Anderson-Cancer-Center-jobs.html

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Progressive Tele.

They Prefer you to have your BSN or MSN, many hospitals are saying this, even the one i work in, but they Hire ADN all the time..

Check out this link to MD Anderson...these are current jobs that are available for RN's. Make sure you scroll down to the "Educational Requirement"...they want either a BSN or a MSN...here's the link.

http://www.indeed.com/q-M.D.Anderson-Cancer-Center-jobs.html

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They Prefer you to have your BSN or MSN, many hospitals are saying this, even the one i work in, but they Hire ADN all the time..

But, that's just it...THEY PREFER BSN'S OR MSN'S! Can you honestly say if you took 2 nurses with the same level of experience and one has a BSN and the other has an ADN, it won't make a difference? IT MAKES A DIFFERENCE!

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Specializes in Emergency & Trauma/Adult ICU.
Dear Altra,

I did not say to not advance yourself in nursing. Did you not read what I said? I said go back to school if you WANT to go back.

Excuse me, hospitals can and will play games with you, or are you a new nurse? If you're a new nurse, you've got some learning to do. If you're happy with your lot in life and you've worked hard for your degree, work and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

On the other hand, if you want to advance and go into management or administration, an advanced degree would help. But if you enjoy helping patients, working on the floor or a specialty, a lot of times an advanced degree is only that and no more.

I am all for going back to school, but I have met too many people who have them and don't make anymore money than a nurse with hands on experince. Nurses are in demand and WE CALL THE SHOTS, Literally. They need us more than we need them. The pressure they put on you is trying to maintain their control. If you don't understand that, I can't explain it in simpler terms.

Be the captain of your ship and sail away into your dream job. If you don't like working directly with patients, go the admin. route and go get your MSN.

Not a new nurse ... and also a career-changer with nearly 2 decades of work experience behind me before becoming a nurse. I'm well-versed in the behavior of large organizations, and very much the captain of my own ship in my current position in direct patient care, thanks.

I'll attempt to make this more clear for you.

Throughout the 100+ pages of this thread, one recurrent theme of discussion has been the debate over whether, or how much, a uniform educational requirement as a point of entry to registered nursing would elevate the profession.

You've seemed to imply that, in your opinion, nurses currently hold power simply because employment opportunities are plentiful in some areas of the country at this current time.

I suggest to you that this does not necessarily equal power.

I can pick up my local newspapers and find page after page of ads for RNs. The demand produces temporary bubbles in the wages offered (often one-time sign-on bonuses that have little to no effect on real wages over the long term) and curious quirks like drawings for "girlie" things like a day at a spa.

This is power? No. This is akin to attracting children to do something required of them by offering candy as a reward.

If you get a feeling of power from desperate supervisors calling you for OT, and throwing in an extra $75 or some such thing ... more power to you.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this point.

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To PMFB-RN, I agree with you whole heartedly. Nurses who want to be managers, should have a management degree. I have met some nursing managers who were lazy, totally incompetent, and couldn't manage a fly in the room. Easy management is bad management and we all know that nursing needs good managers. Put a BS in Management on their plate.

quote]

The nurse manager should have a nursing background and a management degree. I've seen manager's who weren't nurses working in these positions and they dont' have a CLUE as to what's going on. A friend of mine told me she once had a nursing manager who had a Master's degree in education...it was a disaster and she didn't last long! Can you imagine, a nurse manager who's not a nurse??

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Dear Altra,

Yes, I agree with you to a certain point. I really think no one has the answer. Hospitals can't fill nursing positions, Nurses are overworked and underpaid, the CEOs care only about the bottom line and staying in the black. Nurses don't get the support that is needed and they are worn out, many nursing managers don't have a clue how to manage their floor. You start to see a pattern where everyone is in charge and and nobody is really in charge and nothing gets done.

I have seen the nursing profession go down, down, down. All of my friends who are RNs are leaving the profession and pursuing other career paths. It is scary and the hospitals are getting desperate and very nervous.

Sign on bonuses scare me. I agree with you on that one. In Florida, if you sign on at some hospitals, they will give you a brand new car. Honest Engine. I went in for surgery in Jacksonville,FL, and they begged me to put off my surgery so I could please help out the nursing staff. They were frantic. This is true. I am really scared when I get elderly because I wonder what kind of care I will receive. It is getting worse - not better. This is how I see it. I have lived in GA, SC, PA, LA and TX, and it is not good in any of these states. God Help US

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Dear Altra,

Yes, I agree with you to a certain point. I really think no one has the answer. Hospitals can't fill nursing positions, Nurses are overworked and underpaid, the CEOs care only about the bottom line and staying in the black. Nurses don't get the support that is needed and they are worn out, many nursing managers don't have a clue how to manage their floor. You start to see a pattern where everyone is in charge and and nobody is really in charge and nothing gets done.

I have seen the nursing profession go down, down, down. All of my friends who are RNs are leaving the profession and pursuing other career paths. It is scary and the hospitals are getting desperate and very nervous.

Sign on bonuses scare me. I agree with you on that one. In Florida, if you sign on at some hospitals, they will give you a brand new car. Honest Engine. I went in for surgery in Jacksonville,FL, and they begged me to put off my surgery so I could please help out the nursing staff. They were frantic. This is true. I am really scared when I get elderly because I wonder what kind of care I will receive. It is getting worse - not better. This is how I see it. I have lived in GA, SC, PA, LA and TX, and it is not good in any of these states. God Help US

There is something that IS more important to CEOs- they care more about keeping nurses and the entire nursing profession in their control. THAT is the core of what is going on. Think outside the box!

What do you think is the underlying factor in hospitals not recognizing a BSN with better pay and more prestige. What hospitals fear more than anything is nursing finally organizing under one body, and exerting their control over hospitals, nursing homes, etc. If nurses were paid more if they have their BSN, nurses would be flocking to schools to obtain a BSN and ADN and dipoma programs would already be out of business.

But, alas, there is no reward for bedside nurses who have a BSN!! They are told that they will get their reward when they go into management and/or go to graduate school and obtain another degree that will give them the magical power to charge more for their services.

One only has to read the threads from nurses who have become APN, and those who have decided to teach, to figure out that there is really not much reward for their efforts. The only advanced profession that really seems to reward an advanced degree is CRNA- and probably because it is a male dominated profession.

It seems everyone is dancing around the problem, but no one seems to have a answer that satisfies everyone. The answer is pay nurses more money, provide safe nursing ratios, and treat nurses with respect. That does not satisfy the PTB who do not want to cut into their profit margin by doing the obvious.

Nurses need to unite before the PTG take the next step by deskilling nursing entirely. They will sell it to the public by saying that this will control health care costs, since nurse are so underworked and over paid. Wait and see.

The public may love us in polls, but wait until and if, we really exerted our power and demanded salaries and benefits that our skills and knowledge deserve. They will have no trouble believing that a nurses aid with barely a HS diploma can do our job.

Hospitals and corporations are working diligently to under cut our civil justice system to prevent the legal accountability from lawsuits for their unsafe "solutions" to a nursing shortage that they created. We need to increase our entry into practice to differentiate us from lesser skilled and lesser educated pracitioners. We need the unity to stand up to big corporations, who have decimated our health care system. As it stands now, nursing is a powerless profession, with the exception of the California Nurses Association and the NNOC.

LPNs need to go to a two year associates degree as entry into practice, and RNs need to go to a BSN. Nurses aids need to have at least a six month to a year training program that is standarized all over the country, and it should be at the community college level. No more of nursing homes providing "free nurses aid training", and everyone has a different program. No one, not even the recipients of that OJT have any idea what or who is taking care of them or their loved ones. There is more standardization for hairdresser and barber training, than for someone to care for helpless individuals in a nursing home. We now have glorified nurses aids passing meds in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Are we better off by not having a standarized entry into practice?

Having a unified entry into practice will unify us like no other way. ADNs and Diploma grads will be grandfathered in, and not made to earn a BSN.

Please spare me the sob stories from individuals who "couldn't have become nurses if they had to attend a longer program", yada yada yada. Every other health care professional has at least a Bachelors Degree as entry into practice. Even Physical Education majors who major in "Recreational Therapy", have Bachelors Degree as entry into practice. They all somehow manage to make it through a Bachelors degree program, and higher, to obtain the career that they want. They have no other choice, that is the difference.

And here we are, nurses responsible for peoples' live, entering the profession with as little as one year of post HS education. Is there any wonder why we have so little credibility in the business and corporatate world? As I said, the public may think that we are wonderful, but lets ask for more money and we will hear," what do you 'girls' expect? You only went to school for two years'". Our support would vanish.

Anyway, once again, JMHO, and my NY $0.02.

Lindarn, RN ,BSN, CCRN

Spokane, Washington

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