Need advice on being a nurse please.

[zorrah]

I am a registered medical assistant who wants to become an RN. How do I do that? When I check the courses at colleges, they seem to offer only classes for current nurses only. Where do I start, community college or can I take online courses for the classroom stuff and do clinicals at a local hospital? Thank you.

[EricJRN, MSN, RN]

Welcome to Allnurses, Zorrah! I moved your post to the Nursing Career Advice Forum for more responses. You might also check out the Illinois Forum. Good luck!

[Wren]

Zorrah,

There are 3 ways to train to be an RN.

1) Go to a 4 year college and major in nursing and you will graduate with a Bachelor's degree in nursing (BSN)

2) Go to a community college and complete a 2 year program and get an Associate's degree in nursing (ADN).

3) Go to a hospital based program and complete 2-3 year program and you will have completed a diploma program.

All of nurses have to take the exact same licensing exam (NCLEX). There are never ending debates about which preparation is "best" and I won't go into them here. You can look on AllNurses and find plenty to read on that.

The real difficulty is in getting accepted into any of these programs. Most BSN and ADN programs (I don't know about diploma) require that you come into the program with many prerequisites. You won't even be considered until you have successfully completed them. They can be things like microbiology, chemistry, etc. Check the local community colleges and 4 year colleges and check out their admission requirements.

It sounds like a lot of work and it is but it is totally worth it! Good luck.