Non-Nurse considering NP route Please help

[elipscombs]

Hello everyone, I am 32 and have a family. I have always wanted to have a great career in the medical field. I care so much about people and I want to make a difference in people's life. I have a Bachelor's degree in Social Science, but I do not have any nursing experience at all. I am considering going back to school and getting a Bachelor's degree in nursing and then going into a Master's/Doctorate Nurse Practitioner Program at the University of Florida. I just have a few questions to see if you all can help me. I would probably work some as a nurse while doing the Master's/DNP but that would be my only nursing work experience other than clinical experience during school. I wanted to see if not having a lot of experience as a nurse would make it very hard for me to get a job right out of school as a Nurse Practitioner. I know some people say you need 5 or more years experience as a nurse, but the University of Florida has told me they have not had any students have any problems getting a job without prior nursing experience. The bottom line is I know many people have been nurses for years and I respect that so much, I am considering Nurse Practitioner so much because of the focus on patient care. However, I do not want to invest a lot of time and money in school if I would have a really hard time finding a job as a new NP right out of School in Florida or Georgia. Please tell me your opinions on this. Would you recommend NP for me or recommend PA more.

Thanks for all of your time

Eric

[talaxandra]

Hi Eric,

the NP role is very new in Australia, and our funding & economy's quite different from the US expereince, so I can't offer you any useful information about your employment prospects - and by the time you've finished who knows what will be happening, anyway?

So why am I replying to your post? Nursing's equal parts theoretical and practical, and there's only so much of the latter that you'll be exposed to before applying for NP positions. If you check any of the new grad threads you'll quickly see how steep they generally find the learning process once they hit the ward as registered nurses rather than students.

Medicine has a clear training path - doctors have to complete residencies in a number of areas, then specialise under guidance. I wouldn't be confident seeing a doctor who jumped from graduation to independent clinical practice without that period of exposure, support, oversight and guidance.

It worries me that so many people think that they can go straight from a BN to NP (via a nrse practitioner program) without that hands on experience. I'm not having a go at you, Eric, and I know that the school says it can be done, but if it were me contemplating haivng that much responsibility, autonomy and liability without having a strong clinical background I'd be very cautious. I'd also want to look at how many NP candidates that program intends to process - though the roles of nurisng are expanding across the board, with new positions cropping up (at least in Aus), my concern would also be that you could come out of the program to find the market flooded with other qualified nurses who have little clinical experience competing in an increasingly saturated market.

I'm not saying it's not possible, or not advisable, and I know these concerns are part of why you posted. I guess I;d just urge you to look at the possibility of spending a couple of years between BN and NP education working on the floor. You may even find an area you really like somewhere you didn't expect.

Good luck with whatever path you take :)