MSN while working and with a family??

[FutureOBNurse2118]

I plan on trying to attend Frontier University and enroll in the Womens Health Nurse Practitioner program. To all of you Nurse Practioner students, how doable is a graduate degree in nursing with a familly and while working. Do you go part time? Full time? Do you still work, or do part time work? How do you manage your day to day while getting your masters degree and working? If you could share your experiences I would really appreciate it!

[carachel2]

"Doable" depends on your comfort level and your specific "line in the sand" as far as maintaining work/school and family balance. I personally have just one child after years of infertility, etc. and I didn't want to miss much of it BUT I still wanted to grow and seek out a new career. If you do not HAVE to work then by all means don't. Your future employers don't really care where you worked during school. During the first part of school when most classes are heavily based in (blah blah blah) nursing theory and research, it was easier to work one or two shifts a week in the ER. But the middle of the program came around and the clinical hours amped up and I just found it harder to balance everything so I quit entirely.

[gapeach427]

I had great support from my husband (helping w/care of our 2yo, housework, sometimes cooking, etc). I worked part-time (night shift) and went to school kind of an in-between part-time and full-time. I usually took 2 courses, unless it was a clinical. For clinicals, I did one at a time since it required 90-240 clinical hours. I did most of my school work at work (when we weren't busy), during our son's naps and after he went to bed, etc. The last two semesters were harder since I had more clinical hours on top of working, but I made it through, and it was worth it :) Good luck!