"Don't waste your time getting your BSN..."

JustaMaleRN · Jul 21, 2005

Getting a BSN is a personal choice. If you believe in evidenced based practice and current research...you would go after a BSN. WHen you consider that a ADN is about three years, you might as well just stick out that fourth year and get the BSN.

Linda Aiken PhD, RN published a study that showed better survival rates for patients when cared for by a Bachelors prepared Nurse. I hear complaints about the only difference being the liberal arts portion.

Lets face it, knowledge is power. The more you know, the stronger you are as an individual and as an advocate for your patient. It helps when you can relate to patients on every level. Sometimes that philosophy class does help out.

The final push is this. As a Nurse, the only people you will work with who have less than a BSN is your Radiology Tech and your Respiratory Therapist. Everyone else has a BS to an MS minimum for entry level into that profession. You are then attempting to communicate on a level playing field with people who know more than you...doesn't that ADN kind of push you to the back of the group?

My advise for everyone is to take advantage of the educational opportunities your employer give you. If they offer a degree completion program, DO IT! Especially if they are willing to pay for it. Get every bit of education you can out of your employer. It makes you a stronger nurse, and gives you the advantage when caring for your patients and being an advocate for your patients and profession.

Just a couple of thoughts.

phatemach · Jul 21, 2005

This has been a hot topic. I was always told that I was wasting my time. Truth is, most BSNs are planning on continuing their education. BSN was just a stepping stone to CRNA for me. BSN is becoming a standard in the field. Most job postings state that BSN is prefered. If you put a BSN and an ADN in a job interview together, the BSN is getting the job. Also, BSN do start a few dollars more an hour than ADN. Their cap is higher and they have the opportunity to advance. In AZ, as most states, ADN takes about four years anyway. That is reason enough to send most people into a BSN program.

Kabin · Jul 21, 2005

Getting a BSN is a personal choice. If you believe in evidenced based practice and current research...you would go after a BSN. WHen you consider that a ADN is about three years, you might as well just stick out that fourth year and get the BSN.
Linda Aiken PhD, RN published a study that showed better survival rates for patients when cared for by a Bachelors prepared Nurse. I hear complaints about the only difference being the liberal arts portion.

Good points.

Some other generalized complaints I hear regarding the local ADN/BSN program differences are BSNs do more classroom stuff (more concentration on textbooks, research papers, etc) and less clinical. Nothing wrong with that, especially if you want to go down the MS path.

ali_gator · Jul 21, 2005

2 years of prerequisites and 2 years of nursing program is not the standard for all nursing programs. The BSN program that I am currently enrolled is actually three years of nursing courses. During your sophmore year you are taking both prerequisites and nursing courses. To be exact 6 nursing courses.

My B.S.N. program is also three years of nursing courses, including classes in leadership, community health, and domestic abuse. I feel like I'll be very well prepared.

CudlsNHugs · Jul 21, 2005

Would someone tell me what ADN is?

An "ADN" is an associates in nursing degree, a 2-year course of study.

The "BSN", or bachelor's degree is a 4-year program, and prepares the nurse to provide more in-depth assesssment, gives management/leadership training, and is usually a mandate to move up within a hospital to positions of more authority. When I was in my BSN program, there were ADN's in my program returning for the degree. It seemed hard for them to return after having families, working, etc., and it's easier just to get it all at the same time. (In my humble opinion) :)

An "MSN" is usually used by nurses wanting to do research, become advance nurse practioners, or teach. Otherwise, you can get a Master's in Health Care Administration, or MBA for management.

My PhD is also in Health Care Administration, and it's served me well in management. Whatever you do, be happy. These jobs are just too hard not to enjoy whatever you're doing!

OK....class is over...... :chuckle

Kabin · Jul 21, 2005

I think I've read some Accelerated BSN programs are only 12 months. :uhoh21:

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Jul 21, 2005

People are always trying to tell me that I am going to waste my time by not stopping after getting my ASN. They say that getting your BSN just gets you management positions and that it does not pay more. I am going for my masters so I can be a CNM, so I have to have my BSN anyway but, how could it be true that a person with a BSN gets the same as a person with a ASN? (Aside from the fact that working in different dept can make a difference)

Getting a BSN is not just about increasing your knowledge of nursing. I put off getting my BSN for about 6 years before getting serious and going back to school. My big thought that kept me from going back was that I was doing hospital nursing in the late 70s and didn't see the need or the reason to get a BSN. The very few BSNs I had worked with weren't any better than me on the job, or so I convinced myself at the time. It was probably jealousy on my part. I was starting to get frustrated with my job and drifted around from one to another for a few years because I was getting bored and felt that I had mastered most of the nursing procedures. I had a burning desire to get a bachelors degree because I wanted my mother to be able to brag that at least one of her kids had gotten one. With those (probably not very good) reasons I went to the BSN completion program for RNs at Cleveland State Univeristy in Ohio. They made it difficult to get accepted into their program at the time. They would only grant you undergraduate nursing credit based on already having an RN license and after passing a little clinical skills test they had devised. After being failed in their clinical entrance exam because they said I had not properly positioned a patient in the bed I was really angry. But, I stuck it out and tried again for two reasons. 1) I was mad that they would fail me (who turned and repositioned comatose patients all the time at work) on properly turning and positioning a patient in bed, and 2) three of the people I worked with were in their program and I sure wasn't going to let this school make me feel that I couldn't do it also. Again, two not very good reasons for pushing on. However, once in the upper division nursing classes I had wonderful instructors who we were required to meet with weekly for a one-on-one session and that is where my attitude started to change. Those one-on-ones were really counseling sessions, I think. Only 3 of us in my BSN completion program were staff RNs. Everyone else was already in management, supervision or administration and was there because their work place was requiring them to get a BSN to keep their positions. So, I felt that I didn't have the pressure of having to get my BSN and that it was my choice. My classmates were amazed that I would bother to get a BSN if I didn't need to. Was that a bad attitude, or what? I had vowed for years that I would never be in management or supervision as I had a pretty unhealthy disdain for many of "those" people.

However, what I finally came to realize is that the coursework to get the BSN made me a better thinker and a better problem solver. As one of my instructors so metaphorically put it, getting your BSN gives you more tricks to carry around in your bag. It makes you more aware of the huge database of information to draw from and where to go to get more information if you need it. And, believe me, there is a boatload of it, much of it unknown to many. The instuctors at the university also made it very clear to us that nursing was just our chosen field of specialty. We were, foremost, working toward a bachelors degree and just like every other field of study where people were getting bachelor degrees there were very specific requirements we had to satisfy. We had to have a solid background of prerequisites in art and science (their program was part of the school of arts and sciences) and we all were being taught the research methods so widely used in our country today. The big lesson I took away from my bachelor education was not so much what I learned in the upper division nursing, but how to learn and think for myself. It kind of goes to that quote that if you give a man a fish he will eat for a day, but if you teach him how to fish he will be able to feed himself for a lifetime. I kind of look at my BSN education as that. I feel that I gained a richness of what I already knew; it added quality to my performance. I learned how to think better and how to search out answers to questions for myself. I became much more aware of the other activities being done by people in other job positions in the hospital that had an impact on nursing. If you don't know what to look for, you won't find these things. All those term papers that I had to write were teaching me how to find information and learn to put it together in a way that was useful.

That is the worth of getting a bachelor's degree. If anyone out there disagrees with that then I would say that they were short changed by their universities or they are just refusing to see the wisdom of what the university was trying to impart to them. Or, maybe they didn't have wonderful instuctors like I did who had to hit me over the head with this wise insight as mine had to. :chuckle And, yes, I will acknowledge that you don't have to get a bachelor's degree to know how to find information on your own and be a good thinker. There is an element of prestige in getting a higher degree. Its kind of like an internal smile for yourself. But it doesn't mean that you need to lord it over those who haven't gotten one. Those who do that are the ones who have given BSNs a bad reputation. That is a character flaw on their part, so don't hold it against the rest of us. It makes me think about Ghandi and how educated he was but still preferred to live the way so many of his countrymen did and to identify with them. His education was only a part of his life, not the whole man.

Did it change my performance as a staff RN on the medical units where I worked? Probably not. Hands on skills are still hands on skills. What did change, a lot, was my attitude toward my profession. I would avidly research (on my own!) a procedure or a disease that I didn't understand very well. I made it a point to find out (on my own!) just how nurses got to be writers of the articles in the nursing journals--something I always wondered about. I was more committed to being non-judgmental and more open to new ideas. Where did it get me? I was asked to go to the nursing office when I finished my night shift one morning and was very worried that I was in trouble for something. I nearly fell out of the chair when they told me they wanted me to be a supervisor--a position that I had such disdain for over the years. Self-realization here. . .I was angry at the individuals who had been supervisors, not the job itself. The nursing administrators saw my potential long before I ever did. Perhaps I've just had a fortuitous life (in other words, been lucky), I don't know. But I do know that getting my BSN changed my attitude about a lot of things in this world and it just wasn't about nursing. One of those attitudes is that there is something to learn from every situation.

You can have a BSN and still be a clinical practitioner at the staff nurse level if you want. No one is going to break your arm and tell you that you have to be a manager when you have a BSN. It's a personal decision you may have to make like I was confronted with. But, be prepared to answer those people who will wonder why you are "still" working as a staff nurse; why you are bothering to get a BSN anyway. You have the opportunity at those moments to really influence someones attitude, so remember not to blow it when it happens!

I could have said "no" to the supervision position, but I gave it a try and it turned into the best job I ever had. I felt that I was fully utilitizing the things I had learned in nursing school. Staff nurses are only participating in a limited aspect of nursing and that is to deliver patient services. As a supervisor you see the whole nursing process in a much broader spectrum very much like is taught in school. I also realized that in that job I had the opportunity to influence a lot of other healthcare people in the hospital, something I was always aware of and took very seriously and why I am responding to your post. Most people go into management because they want to be in charge and do some string pulling. Dose of reality here. . .you really can't do that very effectively at the staff nurse level. But I have news for them. Everyone, let me repeat that, everyone has to answer to someone else at their job. I saw managers who had become just as frustrated as staff nurses because they could not do all the things they had dreamed that they could do as managers. I saw it in every management meeting I had to, let me reinterate that, HAD to attend. They had different worries than the staff nurses like curtaining overtime and still worry about how to keep their units staffed so the patients were getting cared for. And here's another insider tidbit from a supervisor eye view. . .you get to see on a huge scale just how negative a lot of the nursing staff is. It was overwhelming to me because I thought everyone who went into nursing did it because they would love taking care of patients. I have always felt that every staff nurse should have a crack at being a supervisor because it would open their eyes to so much that goes on that you just can't see at the staff nurse level because you are too involved in doing patient care. The reason people get into management and supervision is usually because of their positive attitude (at least with their superiors) and when they begin to get negative they get the boot out the door. In general, it's easier for the bosses to fire or demote someone in management. The performance evaluation of a manager is a lot different from that of a salaried worker. The bosses don't like negative people in their management meetings. Have you ever worked with someone who was really negative? Did you like it? Did you want them to go away? Why should the people who run a hospital be any different, hm?

Get your BSN for yourself and keep a positive cheerie attitude. That way, people think you like what you do, and the heck with what everyone else thinks. Be true to what your heart and mind are telling you. Your heart and your mind are only concerned about your best interests. Your patients and co-workers will get the benefit of it. And, go on and get your masters so you can be a clinical practitioner. SOME OF US like to work with patients. That's why we became nurses. Some of us want to be the best we can be. I so admire your motives. Don't listen to all the negativity you get from others. Do this for you and the patients whose lives you will impact. Good luck! I hope you have a good word processing program on your computer and some good reference books around because you're going to need them. :chuckle You may find that you really like writing. (Can you tell I like to write?) Sorry to carry on so long. My idea here was to give you a mental boost as well as impart some words of wisdom. My good wishes are extended to all of you who are pursuing a higher education and to those who are happy where they are. TOGETHER we all contribute to great profession. :blushkiss

ali_gator · Jul 21, 2005

Very well said. :)

mtn_aire · Jul 21, 2005

Would someone tell me what ADN is?

Associate Degree of Nursing. The type of degree available through many community college programs.

Franlpntorn · Jul 21, 2005

Would someone tell me what ADN is?

It's a two year program.

mtn_aire · Jul 21, 2005

It's a two year program.

I always find that statement comical, as it's really a 4 year program when you factor in pre-reqs and general education course requirements. Two years is simply the time it takes to get through RN specific coursework. So, about the same time it takes to complete a BS, just fewer classes.

tvb2a · Jul 21, 2005

Would someone tell me what ADN is?

ADN means Associate Degree in Nursing. Hope this helps. :)