TheSquire

Five years experience as an FNP, largely in urgent care. I am currently bouncing around the Great Lakes states doing locums in occupational medicine, $90/hr on a 1099 gig, so no benefits. I'm in the process of being credentialed for a locums urgent care gig, same rate but W2, so I won't have to deal with my own withholding, deducting work expenses, etc. I'm currently looking for permanent gigs in the city where I live - I'd be happy with at least $70/hr W2 for urgent care or something adjacent.

That's not how the LACE framework works - after you graduate, in all the states that I'm aware of you then have to apply for and be granted licensure, generally after you are certified in your specialty. Just like graduating from nursing school does not itself make one a nurse in many states, merely graduating from an APRN program does not by itself make you an APRN.

The Urgent Cares that I've worked at generally put full-time at 4 shifts/week. I'm now going to work at an Emergency Department; 120 hours/4 weeks is considered full time by the practice, with shifts being generally 10 or 12 hours long.

Whenever management at my former ED made noises about staff not taking lunches, I'd point out A) properly staffing the unit is their responsibility and B) that I'd never gotten a 15-minute break, let alone two of them, in addition to my lunch break while working there. They'd go quiet for a while after that.

UCC nurses haunt the Ambulatory Care specialty page

My experience is working at BSA Summer camps as a Health Officer, which are a different setting than most Summer camps you'll see discussed here. While the exact situation varies depending on local state laws and regulations regarding Summer camps, in order to work for a Scout camp you'll need to have some sort of completed certification in order to be a Health Officer, although that can be as low as Medical First Responder/Emergency Medical Responder.

I suture (which I did a lab on in school); I also do I&Ds, nail trephination, superficial foreign body removal, and ear irrigation,

I don't know where you're getting "most" from. At least in NJ, "most" Urgent Cares are either mom-and-pops or franchised chains independent from the local hospital groups.

IBCLC is effectively an RN-level certification; it's hefty, to be sure, but it does not grant any Advanced Practice privileges. This seems like someone who has mistaken simile for equivalency.

Many urgent cares don't do IV access/infusion except while waiting on an ambulance to take an acute pt to the ED, so those skills are rarely needed, and often done by the provider.

I took Solheim's class from the man himself back in the before-times and then passed the test a month later, so while I can't comment on the efficacy of the online version, the in person format worked well for me. He's also good at going over the things you might not see in your area, but are on the test. Also, you definitely should sit through your ENPC and TNCC prior to taking the CEN - a lot of the material from those two classes make it onto the exam.

I'm reminded of a scene in Fight Club, and I should bring up that one would have to factor in the increased rate of errors committed by new grads and other new hires and the resultant increase in malpractice settlement payouts, unless that's already included in the $50k/new hire figure.

I graduated from DePaul's DNP/FNP program in November 2018, intending to go into Emergency to initially work Fast Track. I already had a MS in Nursing, so I'd sat the boards after completing the initial clinical curriculum. My problem was that between 2013 when I entered and 2018 when I graduated the employment market saturated and most EM groups wanted experienced APPs to work the main floor. I couldn't even get an Urgent Care job for the better part of a year, since those practices are more bottom-line focused and really don't want to train a completely green new grad. Eventually, I ended up moving to NJ for an Urgent Care position out here; I interviewed in October 2018 and spent the next few months getting my licenses transferred. They paid a bit light, but were willing to hire me on and train. They also turned out to be a bit...hmmm...fly-by-night, and after a year I ended up in a different, better, and better-paying position.

As addressed by others, schools, colleges, and departments of nursing use adjunct positions the way they're intended to be used - to allow a department or school to bring in current practitioners in a field to teach in the classroom and/or supervise on-site learning. Most nursing schools have a bevy of adjuncts which are used for supervising clinical rotations; some states require instructors with faculty rank to supervise lab sections as well. Some schools will have an adjunct teach didactic sections, but if they're doing that they're possibly being auditioned for a non-tenure-track position. Being able to teach multiple classes is one of the better ways to ensure consistently being picked up as an adjunct. I gravitate towards teaching lab myself, either fundamental skills or health assessment, so when the program I first taught for only had 2 cohorts per year, there was always a class I could teach. When they went up to 4 cohorts per year I could pick my favorite class and stick with it, which is when the second strategy to being consistently picked up came into play - I.e., be good at teaching a class other adjuncts don't want to teach, to the point that the program director/course coordinator will slot you in first.

There's a lot to unpack here written by someone who doesn't know what they're talking about, so let's take it from the top. If you're going into nursing specifically to do advanced practice, you're going into the wrong field. If you know that you want to do that, go be a Physician's Assistant. The various advanced practice fields in nursing exist for experienced nurses who decide to go to the next level, not as a quick route from lay person to provider. There is no functional distinction between an MSN and an MS in Nursing; the difference is largely historical, and you can sit boards just the same. My classmates (and students) later matriculated to and graduated from many different post-masters and DNP programs. The MSN-DNP programs that heythatsmybike talks about are properly referred to as DNP-Completion programs...and those require prior advanced practice certification. MENP grads apply to BSN-DNP programs, just like any other baccalaureate-prepared nurses - although I suggest keeping your syllabi to see if you can get out of some grad courses if you matriculate elsewhere. As a graduate of both the MENP and the DNP at DePaul, more than once class transfers over. In fact, for the first year you can go part-time and generally keep pace with the full-time students. DePaul's DNP options are limited, so if you're counting on staying for the DNP you should keep that in mind in case you want to do Acute Care. Graduate School is expensive, but if you go on to pursue additional education in nursing, be it a doctorate or post-master's certificate, the Nurse Practice Act of the State of Illinois requires only requires faculty to have a Master's Degree...which all MENP grads have. I was not unusual in being able to teach my way through my DNP, getting tuition waivers for all the classes I taught. I ended up graduating with no additional debt. Part of the reason for the MENP is that graduate education opens up access to GradPLUS loans, while second bachelors degrees aren't supported by Dept. of ED.-backed loans.