NNP Question

Your license is for 0-2 (24 months), so if your unit is okay with you not taking care of patients older than that, it would be fine. Best thing to do would be to ask your doctors directly. Nursing won't know. They will probably say to just do the PNP because it gives you breadth to do 0-21 so you won't have licensing issues. You'd also need to do acute care PNP, not primary care. If there are no programs nearby, you'd have to either move or do an online program. With the consensus model coming into play, people won't be allowed to work in acute care settings if they are certified as primary care, so definitely don't do that if you don't like clinic work.

Bottom line is it depends on what you want to do. Do you want to take care of babies or children? If you want to do work in a cardiac unit you probably need to suck it up and do PNP. Keep in mind that again, with the consensus model, schools are required to give "across the lifespan" for the three major Ps: pharmacology, pathophys, and physical assessment. My program got away with it by having us do physical assessments on each other (neo was mixed in with peds group) and then we did a separate exam at a daycare.

You are going to find a lot of pedi type stuff and adult stuff in every program, just the way schools work. I didn't like it at first, but now I actually have come to appreciate my more well-rounded education. It has helped me see understand certain things more clearly and see where these patients are headed in the future.

You can certify in both programs if you like. A post-masters usually takes about a year. You are just taking specialized courses for the degree and doing clinical time, so you don't repeat things like research, pathophy, assessment, etc etc.

Your license is for 0-2 (24 months), so if your unit is okay with you not taking care of patients older than that, it would be fine. Best thing to do would be to ask your doctors directly. Nursing won't know. They will probably say to just do the PNP because it gives you breadth to do 0-21 so you won't have licensing issues. You'd also need to do acute care PNP, not primary care. If there are no programs nearby, you'd have to either move or do an online program. With the consensus model coming into play, people won't be allowed to work in acute care settings if they are certified as primary care, so definitely don't do that if you don't like clinic work.

Bottom line is it depends on what you want to do. Do you want to take care of babies or children? If you want to do work in a cardiac unit you probably need to suck it up and do PNP. Keep in mind that again, with the consensus model, schools are required to give "across the lifespan" for the three major Ps: pharmacology, pathophys, and physical assessment. My program got away with it by having us do physical assessments on each other (neo was mixed in with peds group) and then we did a separate exam at a daycare.

You are going to find a lot of pedi type stuff and adult stuff in every program, just the way schools work. I didn't like it at first, but now I actually have come to appreciate my more well-rounded education. It has helped me see understand certain things more clearly and see where these patients are headed in the future.

You can certify in both programs if you like. A post-masters usually takes about a year. You are just taking specialized courses for the degree and doing clinical time, so you don't repeat things like research, pathophy, assessment, etc etc.

Thanks for the info!

I know I know, I think I'll just have to suck it up and do the PNP program and take the "across the lifespan" stuff as just broadening my knowledge further. I think it's just hard for me because I'm not fully committed on actually performing in the NP role, more so on advancing my education. I know I don't want to be a CRNA, and going through an NP program opens up so many roles in the future for me like education, NP, clinical nurse resources, management, etc.

Good thing I have plenty of time to figure this all out.