Non-nursing student interested in MSN

[CRodriguez1990]

I have a bachelors degree in Human Resource Management and work in community mental health, and I am feeling strongly drawn towards moving towards more clinical work. Nursing has always been an interest to me, I just didn't think I could achieve it. However now I am ready to take the leap of faith and move towards my dream job! I am considering psychiatric nurse practitioner. I am wondering, what degree path should I take? Who has successfully completed a direct entry MSN program, and where? How difficult was it? Anyone did this online? I am wondering if I should take the slower route, or the most direct route, which would be my preference. I am ready to get started, I am just wondering which direction to look. Thank you!

[mrsmsh42]

I'm curious (and others among this audience may also be) as to why you'd choose the NP path, as opposed to social work counseling or another equally compatible path towards working in mental health. One of my providers is a psychiatric CNS with prescriptive authority (she has been grandfathered in...she's been doing this role for a long time.)

There are many paths to doing clinical counseling work.

A nurse, to probably a huge number of this audience's readers, is a very special and specific type of role. All of my NP providers were a nurse first, and then a provider. Each of them carries that "nurse first" sensibility to their patient care. It's different than what my MDs and DOs bring.

Some of us (I'm among them) believe that skipping that nurse step to go straight to the advanced practice nurse role leaves a lot of "nurse" out of it. Whereas, going straight to an MSW, for example, feels like a different thing to a lot of us. I work with some fabulous social workers, caring clinical people whose work I highly respect.

Do you want to be a nurse? Is that part of your dream job? Or does your dream job mean providing community mental health work/counseling? Those two things may be different. Is it prescriptive authority you want? That may be less exciting or appealing than you think it might be.

I only ask because if you want to go to nurse practitioner school....you should want to also be a nurse. And I'm not sure that most straight-to-NP students are clear on that.

For what it's worth, I'm a BSN. I am the charge nurse of my clinic, and I thought that the sane work schedule would give me time/breath so that I could do my master's. Now that I've worked with my NPs/CNSs, I've learned that it's in many ways, a totally different job. They are at heart, all nurses. But they're nurses tied to a pager, to long days, to Liability Insurance (again, be very clear if you want prescriptive authority) and more tied to a schedule than I am, and just more....tied ....all the way around than I may be comfortable with.

We welcome more nurses. Please, come join us. Just consider whether you whether want to be a NURSE practitioner, or a practitioner. There's a lot of choices.