UVA Grad Nursing

After Saturday morning, there will be a link that indicates that the letter is available. The link will become valid on that day. Information about the Conway Scholarships will be sent in February (after we know who has accepted the offer of admission). I would recommend begin to prepare the information for the FAFSA which will need to be submitted by January 31st.

The decisions will be available on Saturday, December 20. You will need to log into the application itself and there will be a link that says "Your Admissions Decision is Available". Click on that link to see the decision letter. That link "goes live" on the 20th at 12:01am Eastern Time. Those offered admission will have one month to confirm their space and pay a $250 deposit. We expect to turn to the Waiting List in early February if needed. We anticipate 36 spaces for the Charlottesville cohort and 4-6 spaces for the Abingdon cohort.

While there are many Direct Entry MSN programs that would prepare you to become a nurse and a NP in one 3-year (full-time program), none of these are fully online. None of these are in Kansas. Since you are not available to relocate to another state, I would recommend pursuing an Accelerated BSN program, and then pursuing PMHNP preparation (in a MSN or a BSN-DNP) at a later date.

Are you open to relocation for a teaching position or a long commute? My University has offered the NFLP since 2006, and we have seen the opportunity for loan cancellation if you are open to moving where the jobs may be. It is hard to know precisely where the open positions will be in the year you complete the DNP program. Be open to the possibility that you might not get a fulltime job offer in your town.

®Nurse The finance component is covered in our Care Environment Management I & II classes. The course description for the second semester class is: The course emphasizes the role of the Clinical Nurse Leader as a leader, educator, and advocate for safe, cost effective, and quality care. It examines active participation and communication strategies of the clinical nurse leader within the interdisciplinary system. Students develop competency in nursing informatics to monitor and improve organizational and clinical performance.

We've had a CNL program for a decade now, and have three entry points (Masters Entry, RN with an Associates Degree, and BSN-prepared). We instruct our Master's Entry folks that they will be interviewing for the same novice/new grad positions that BSN graduates are seeking. The vast majority of institutions we deal with treat the new grad CNL the same as a new grad BSN --- but there are some institutions that definitely prefer one group over the other. In general, we've seen the CNL grad rise faster up the clinical ladder than the BSN-prepared grad but a CNL grad is not at the full extent of the CNL role until 2 or so years after graduation. Personally, I am not a big fan of the L-word in the 'CNL' name. They are not "leaders" in the way that nurse managers are leaders or the CNO is a leader. We view the CNL as a bedside clinician with additional training in care coordination, patient safety, error reduction, and outcomes enhancement. But that is too many words to fit neatly on a name badge. In our own curriculum/program, the Direct Entry CNL grad spends over 500 hours in a single unit over 8 months (the final two semesters of the program). This is much more time than our BSN grad spends in any single unit. With us, there is much more time for the manager and senior unit clinicians to assess the qualities/aptitude of the CNL student since they see them 20 hours a week for those 8 months.

Phil: In the second summer of the program all students take a course in Community & Population Health. The classroom part of this course is taught across 2 weeks. Then students have 4-6 weeks for their practicum experiences for this course. About 1/2 of the class has gone overseas (this summer's sites included South Africa, Denmark, Central America, the Caribbean and Thailand) for their clinical experience; the other half have remained in Virginia for their community health clinical experience.

elefant: Most of our applicants are instate residents anyways (nearly 70% last year), so we have not needed to focus on the 50% Virginian requirement. The admissions committee focuses on selecting the best candidates -- instate/out-of-state status has not been a discussion point when the final decisions are made for this program.

We do offer a very holistic review process. The faculty on the admissions committee consider your overall undergraduate GPA, the particular grades received in the 5 prerequisite classes, your volunteer experience, your healthcare experience, your professional work experience, the quality of writing in the essays, the content of the letters of recommendation, and your performance on the GRE (if needed). If a candidate is invited for an interview, then the responses from the interview are added to the consideration of the above factors.

UDC = Univ of the District of Columbia. You would either need to contact the Washington DC nursing board, or look on the website for the ACEN for the accreditation status for any associate degree or LPN program in the US.

The University of Virginia also accepts students directly from high school into the nursing school. The nursing classes and liberal arts core are threaded through all 4 years of the program.

There is a small number of online programs to learn to become a RN. But I would be wary of them. In many states, graduates of these online programs are prohibited to sitting for the RN examination and becoming licensed. In my own state of Virginia, a graduate of such a program would need to move to one of the states that will license you, and then have a minimum of 1000 hours of RN employment (6 months of fulltime work) before you could apply for a Virginia license. Another online program I know of had to close because their NCLEX passrate was under 40%. Several of the community colleges in Virginia have a weekend/night program for working adults (classes on Tues/Thurs nights from 6-9, and clinicals on Saturday or Sunday).

The mean duration of full-time students in our BSN-PhD program is just under 5 years. This would include approximately 3 years of coursework for the MSN and PhD and then approximately 2 years for comprehensives and the dissertation project. Our MSN-PhD students take approximately 4 years (2 years of coursework and 2 years for comps/dissertation.

According to the website of the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing (ACEN), the AAS program at UDC is on warning. The last visit was in 2012 and they are scheduled for another visit this fall. ACEN is the agency that accredits all associate degree programs in the country.

If your interest is in public health nursing, why not look at your local public health department. I know many nurses in public health departments and clinics with only Associate degrees.

Numbers will vary from school to school, but in general there are many more people applying for pre-licensure programs (those training you to become a RN) than for RN-BSN programs. The pre-licensure programs are also more resource intensive (requiring clinicals) than the RN-BSN programs which generally do not have clinical content. At my University, we had over 850 applications to enter the BSN program for this fall (for less than 90 spaces). This included both first-year and transfer applications. We had approximately 70 applications for the RN-BSN program (for 40 spaces).

There will be a need for NPs in the US, but not in all markets or all cities. In my own town of Charlottesville (population 45,000), the FNP market is fairly saturated with the only jobs opening when someone moves away or retires. There are, however, primary care NP positions in rural counties 30+ miles away and I know folks who choose to live here and drive and commute 30-60 mile/day. There are positions in town for acute care NPs with certain specialties (hem/onc, transplant, peds cardiac surgery, etc) and I also know some with FNP certifications who are going back to school for AG-ACNP certifications.

We allow people to complete their DNP practica at their employment site, but not to use their work time as clinical time. So you cannot get paid for the same experiences for which you are earning academic credit.

We have been graduating Master's Entry students since 2007; we award a MSN degree to those from non-nursing backgrounds. None have had any difficulty being hired at Magnet facilities or at the V.A which also has a BSN requirement.

The DNP degree is a doctoral degree in nursing. Since you do not have a Master's in Nursing, you should consider the many BSN-DNP pathways in the country. The MSN-DNP pathways would not be appropriate for you since you do not have a Master's in Nursing.

Go for an accelerated program (ABSN or a Master's Entry). There will be prereqs to take before you apply, but you should be able to take these at your local community college. We've enrolled folks with fine arts degrees into our Master's Entry program before.

We have a number of military nurses in our graduate nursing programs at the University of Virginia. The payback for DUINS, AFIT, and Army Long Term Education for grad school is two years of service for every year of schooling covered. DNAP programs are typically 4 years now, so that would mean 8 years of service afterward.

DNPs are in specialty tracks that relate to direct patient care (mostly the Advanced Practice RN roles) or in the care of populations/communities (public health nursing, etc). Not all nursing disciplines fall under the guidelines of the DNP Essentials. For example, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (which conceived the DNP degree and wrote the Essentials of the DNP) have said that 'nursing education' as a field does not fall under the DNP rubric as the field is not focused on direct care of individuals or populations.

I'll see y'all there, of course. I'm in Booth 550. Clay

The employment situations will vary from region to region. Here in my state of Virginia, employment for WHNPs has been tightening. At the state NP conference this year, I talked with many WHNPs with 10+ years of experience who are going back to school for post-master's FNP certifications. According to these WHNPs, most local employers are favoring FNPs for current open positions.