AprilNK

I jusy revisited this forum. Update about pay in my area of Hampton - $20/hr. I'll be getting the same amount of money in an area with a higher cost of living.

I'm in Virginia.

I will be finishing up a 2-year RN program this spring and ultimately plan on furthering my degree. I would love to be a nurse practitioner eventually. I had planned to take a few years off from school until my son starts school, as I have already missed out on so much because of the demanding school schedule. One of my friends at school went to an area RN-BSN/MSN information session a couple weeks ago and told me last week that they said that starting in 2015, if you aren't already a nurse practitioner you will be required to have your doctorate, not just a master's. Anyone who is already a NP will be grandfathered in. Well this throws a wrench in my plans. I have now applied for the RN-BSN program at our school which is very flexible and mostly online. But that pretty much means that in order to finish my master's and have my NP by 2015 I'm going to have to continue to go to school at least part time for the next few years. So my real question, has anyone else heard this? Is it only in certain states or is it everywhere? Thanks.

I can relate to you on this. I was a SAHM/full-time online student for the last couple years. I started a 22 month program last August and will graduate this spring. I can't wait because I'm ready to be done with school (I've been taking classes at least part-time since I graduated high school in '03). But as crazy and busy as it is I love nursing school. It is definitely a love/hate relationship but even on the days that I hate it, I still love it. I'm on a week break between semesters right now and I'm going stir-crazy! As much as I hate it some days and am ready to be done with it I know it's getting me to my career goal/passion plus I'm not sure what I will do with myself when I don't have classes to be taking!

I'm not in the military but my husband is active duty in the Marine Corps. We have had this discussion many times about me finishing a BSN program and going into the military as an officer. I personally would recommend Air Force, but that's because their deployments are shorter and their quality of life is a lot better when you think about housing, deployments, and just general work. But I am also a mom and am married so going on a ship for 7-12 months at a time is really not appealing to me. As far as pay goes, you are a commissioned officer and they have a pay grade O-1 being the lowest and working up to O-10 eventually. Pay is based on your grade and you are commissioned for generally 6 years and it is a contract. So basically you say "Ok, I'm yours for 6 years." However, a lot of medical occupations in the military have a pretty good bonus for your commission as well as re-commission. And the pay may not look that great but once you add in housing allowance, food allowance, and all of the other benefits it's definitely competitive to the ciivilan sector. Good luck! And whatever you do, definitely go talk to the recruiters but have a list of questions in hand and don't let them just feed you a whole line of BS. If they tell you they can give you something (incentive, etc) get it in writing.

temacrn, I agree with you that the pay isn't very good in comparison to our roles. However, I wanted to give you a little bit of a comparison in pay and cost of living. I am from Indiana and am familiar with the cost of living and the pay. 19-20 dollars per hour starting out may not seem like much but I now live in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia and will be graduating in May from an RN program. The cost of living is much higher (we pay $1200/month mortgage on a 3br/2ba 1400 sq ft house with a small yard and it's right in town. But I will most likely only be making around $24 tops when I start working. The one thing that I will say we do have going for us pay wise is that our shift differentials are pretty significant. But pay is all relative to your area. So 20 bucks per hour in most parts of Indiana isn't all that bad. For the cost of living here, nursing wages are pretty low when compared to other regions of the U.S. with comparable cost of living.

With your GI Bill and all of it's benefits, I would definitely recommend a BSN program! Get it done now before life becomes "too busy". And you might as well use your GI Bill to the max. Paying for the program really shouldn't be a problem with that! I really don't have any good suggestions for a specific program but you should definitely be able to get into a BSN program. Most of the time you are pre-nursing major for your first year while you are working on your gen ed classes and then get accepted to the RN program in your second year, or something to that extent so with a BSN program you won't have to worry about getting gen ed requirements finished before you can apply or worry about them transferring from one school to another. Good luck!

I'm there right now and while I'm 23. I'm not the traditional student either. I am married and have a 19 month old. There are several students who are my age or younger and are single, "traditional", several students who have degrees in other things, and several who are moms with children of all ages. It really is a diverse population and I think that helps a lot. Getting different perspectives on things throughout school is great. It's very family friendly. For example, today, my daycare provider is sick and our back up is unavailable too so I couldn't make it to class. I just email my instructor and let her know what's going on and they are very flexible about it. Also, be prepared to use blackboard a lot while in the program. So you need a computer and internet access daily! Notes for class, schedules, and almost all communication is done via blackboard - just a heads up!

I know that you said that you were looking for an associate degree but I would really recommend Sentara's School of Health Profession. That's where I am going and will be graduating in Summer 2010. We are also military and I totally understand the time constraints and juggling family life with school obligations. But Sentara's instructors are very approachable and family friendly. It is a strenuous program but we are making it. It's also pretty reasonable. I think it's about $3000/semster plus books which aren't too bad. You have to have pre-reqs done before you can start but they are pretty good about accepting classes. I had credits from North Carolina, VA, and Indiana and it all worked out. It's a 22 month diploma program and I have found that a large number of the students are "non-traditional" with families and kids of all ages. Also, I applied last winter when we found out we were coming back to this area and took a couple classes to meet my pre-reqs and was able to start in August, when we had just moved out here in May. Good luck with your search!