MSN Route - Please Read I need help

llg, PhD, RN · Feb 24, 2011

You are smart to be asking these question now, BEFORE investing your time, energy, and money into your graduate program. Too many people make the investment and then find themselves in programs that don't give them careers they really want.

Obviously, the information you seek is too voluminous to put in a single post. What you need is a process to follow to help you make a decent decision. I suggest the following couple of activities to get you started.

1. Browse Amazon.com and find a few books on career planning and/or career options for nurses. There are several out there.

2. Browse the nursing literature and skim the journals that target advanced practice nurses (e.g. managers, educators, NP's, etc.) Learn more about those roles and consider which ones appeal to you.

3. Browse the forums and threads here that focus on those roles and learn more.

4. Then do a self-eval and identify your strengths/weaknesses ... likes/dislikes.

That should keep you busy for a good 6 months -- and give you a foundation upon which to base your decision.

Lil_Mama4sho1 · Feb 24, 2011

Thank you llg I will

Keep the advice coming you guys the more the better

one phoenix rising · Feb 25, 2011

Hi! It sounds like you may need to also do some real-life research. Talk to nurses, try to shadow someone, volunteer in your local ER.

From your question, it sounds like you aren't sure what sort of work you actually want to do. Do you want to be in a classroom, prescribing RXs as an autonomous healthcare practitioner, managing others? Until you figure out what you actually want to do, there's so many options out there that you might get lost doing just book/internet research.

Why do you want to go into nursing in the first place? If it's because you heard it's a career in demand, it's important to realize that nursing schools can be even more competitive than getting into medical school these days. There are a lot of careers out there that are in high demand but don't require the amount of dedication, education, student loans, etc, that health care professions take. The line I always heard used with pre-meds is, "If you are going into this field because you want to make money, go into business instead." (I'm not insinuating that you personally are just after money, but I know that's why some people are looking at nursing right now.)

As someone who wandered for 7 years after finishing my BA, I can tell you that I came to the career goal of becoming a PMHNP by first figuring out what I wanted to do as a career and then figuring out the title of the job that would let me do those things.

Good luck!!!