Question? Advice?

If you work in a hospital setting as a hospital employee, you could be paid the same as a staff nurse with the same experience at that facility, unless your Master's is recognized and you're filling a job that requires a Master's.

I'm a nurse educator - working at the corporate level in a large hospital system.(MSN, EdD) I make more than most of my tenured colleagues in academia. Most healthcare organizations are becoming very serious about employee education and training, especially as we hurtle toward deadlines for meeting Federal 'meaningful use' and other regulatory measures that will have a direct impact on reimbursement. Organizational leaders are finally realizing that 'hi tech' is doomed to failure unless employees can (and will) use the technology as it is intended.

So - the rising tide of organizational accountability is floating our (workplace educators) boats also!! Our work is being recognized as essential rather than 'fluff' that anyone can do. Organizations are looking for qualified educators rather than inservice deliverers.... YEA!! "Instructional design & teaching strategies" are actually being discussed in implementation meetings... (gasp). Those of us who develop on-line learning are really in demand. Opportunities for qualified workplace educators in the healthcare industry have never been better, especially since we now have to design & deliver physician education also.... to meet High Tech initiative requirements.

To the OP, Go for that MSN with a focus on Education. While you're at it, try to convince the school that they need to incorporate more eLearning instructional design & program management/evaluation into their curriculum.... I had to go elsewhere for mine, but that was a while ago.

I'm a nurse educator - working at the corporate level in a large hospital system.(MSN, EdD) I make more than most of my tenured colleagues in academia. Most healthcare organizations are becoming very serious about employee education and training, especially as we hurtle toward deadlines for meeting Federal 'meaningful use' and other regulatory measures that will have a direct impact on reimbursement. Organizational leaders are finally realizing that 'hi tech' is doomed to failure unless employees can (and will) use the technology as it is intended.

So - the rising tide of organizational accountability is floating our (workplace educators) boats also!! Our work is being recognized as essential rather than 'fluff' that anyone can do. Organizations are looking for qualified educators rather than inservice deliverers.... YEA!! "Instructional design & teaching strategies" are actually being discussed in implementation meetings... (gasp). Those of us who develop on-line learning are really in demand. Opportunities for qualified workplace educators in the healthcare industry have never been better, especially since we now have to design & deliver physician education also.... to meet High Tech initiative requirements.

To the OP, Go for that MSN with a focus on Education. While you're at it, try to convince the school that they need to incorporate more eLearning instructional design & program management/evaluation into their curriculum.... I had to go elsewhere for mine, but that was a while ago.

HI... this may be a little bit off-topic and I don't want to hijack the OP. But your comment is interesting. In our area, the two main competing hospitals are in a cut-throat competition to monopolize the health care plans for all area employers. So they underbid each other. They are losing millions of dollars per year. (I'm not a big executive, so their behavior is anti-intuitive to me. I guess if I had an MBA, I might get it... but...) At any rate, because they are both broke, they have to lay off people. They don't want to get publicity for laying off "bedside nurses" so they lay off middle-level nurses, usually the nurse educators with MSN's. I'm currently in academia where a lot of these nurses have landed, and our faculty is richer and deeper because of them.

To the OP: NLNAC accredited us not long ago. One of the things they were looking at was the number of folks with straight MSN's vrs. the number with Masters in Nursing Education we had. As it turned out, we had too many educators. Serious shuffling had to take place to get the right balance. One of our very fine faculty members is an APN in Women's Health, and she is the backbone of our Ob courses. I don't see why you couldn't have your cake and eat it too. Based upon my limited and very regional experience, I would say the NP Masters is more bankable than the Masters in Nursing Education.