Question for those who have completed an RN-BSN

[RevolutioN2013]

I have a question for those who have completed an RN-BSN. I already have a BS degree in an unrelated field. So if one looks at a typical 4 year college degree and breaks it down into general education and major-specific education then it makes sense to me that obtaining a BSN on top of my existing BS would take 2 years. However, if I already have a nursing diploma which will be 4 semesters of nursing specific classes, why would I need that two years? Why would obtaining the BSN not just be 1 year or two semesters? Can anyone enlighten me on this? The reason I'm asking is that every RN-BSN program I have looked at in my area talks about it taking anywhere from 15 months to 2 and 1/2 years to complete. I have not called program coordinators to ask my question, but it has been bugging me. It seems that it would be reasonable for me (or any student in this hypothetical position) to receive credit for the classwork completed in the Diploma or ADN program and reduce the amount of time it takes to get the BSN. Can anyone fill me in on how this process works?

Thank you!

I'm working on pre-reqs now and hope to enter NS into my local accelerated diploma program in May '12.

[Bumashes, MSN, APRN, NP]

They fill it up with crap classes is why it takes so long. I wish I would have just took the BSN originally, but oh well. Doing the RN-BSN now, and it's just full of fluff. I looked at 6 different colleges for my area and they all were filled with useless stuff. Well, okay, there are about 2 classes out of the 11 that actually look interesting, so not all fluff. I guess it's just b/c they don't know what to do with you if you've already gotten your RN, so they just throw courses at you so they can make money off of you. I believe that I would have had a much better learning experience with my BSN had I gone that route originally.

Also, to the person comparing classes of the ADN and BSN programs, you've got to look at the credit hours gained by the courses. In my ADN program, it would only list us as taking 3 classes per semester, like Acute Care of the Adult I, Pharmacology, and Dosage Calculations. The Acute Care class gave you 12 credit hours and covered anything from Psych Nursing to Emergency/Critical Care Nursing to Rehabilitative Nursing to Maternal. An all-in-one type deal. Then the Pharm class was for 3 credit hrs, and the Dosage Cal was for 1 credit hr. So you end up taking 16 hrs that semester, which is on par with most BSN programs. ADN programs just lump all the classes into one single class that the BSN programs tend to list out as many separate classes. We would even have mini-pharm tests at the end of each section that would pertain to commonly used drugs in that area (like Psych or Emergency.) So even pharm got mixed in with all the other areas in that one single class. So it seems that the RN-BSN programs just try to pull out most of the med-surg and patho classes and have you take research, nursing trends, nursing theory, and leadership & management in order to complete your BSN.

Oh well, I had a Bachelor's for Science Education before I went for my ADN. I was not familiar enough with nursing and all the rigamarole surrounding the ADN, Diploma, and BSN nonsense. I thought that ADN was just where everybody was supposed to start. Felt like a dork when I figured it out during my second semester. But Hurricane Katrina had destroyed the University I would have wanted to attend anyway. Now it's rebuilt, and I'm completing my BSN.

Sorry to the OP. This seems like it's about to go down the path of ADN vs BSN as usual. *Sigh*

[RevolutioN2013]

Thank you all for your input. This reinforces my goal of doing an RN-MSN at Chapel Hill. They have 1 semester of "bridge" prerequisites to take based on your own curriculum gaps and then you begin MSN coursework. This is, of course, assuming that I get accepted to the program once I get to that stage in my career.