Real Difference (Experienced Nurses)

I know your looking for experienced nurses to respond but since no one else has posted....

i'm not even a nurse I'm a tech/nursing student, but this issue has come up at my job actually

they used to hire ADN's for ICU, and hired a good deal of them before we became MAGNET... after that they hired only BSN's....

The people they hired were all mostly new grad BSN's even some even had their Masters... but most had NO NURSING EXPERIENCE...... a few they hired didnt make it threw orientation and were let go... even one with a masters degree didnt make the cut

alot of the nurses at my job feel it does not make much of a difference on the job wether you have ADN or BSN..... they said you really start to learn once your on the job anyway

I think maybe it has to with the ADN program in my area, which most of how nurses attended. It has a very good reputation...

If experience is the crucial factor, a new ADN grad and a new BSN could both easily face the exact same dilemma if they have no other nursing background and graduated from a program that offered very limited 'real-life' clinical nursing experience. In general, perhaps more ADN programs have a stronger clinical component than BSN programs, but it's not inherent to either type program; it just depends on the program itself, with some BSN programs being very clinically rigorous and some ADN programs churning out grads with minimal clinical confidence.

The real question, as I see it, is what exactly is a BSN supposed to offer to a nurse BEYOND ASN? Well, a bachelor's degree for one. Included in that bachelor's is (supposedly) a certain level of coverage of research methods, statistics, and complementary upper division topics such as abnormal psychology, medical sociology and the like. Are BSN programs *required* to spend more time on nursing theory? It gets even more confusing when ADN programs offer a lot more than the bare minimum. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to do so; it just adds to confusion over what the differences are.

Clinically? I don't see a BSN really offering much for a practicing nurse, except perhaps for a broader perspective (based on those complementary subject studies) and a signficant emphasis on the role of research in practice. That *is* valuable, but I can certainly question it's value as a *requirement* for entry level bedside nursing. More education is almost always a good thing, but what's enough as a minimum for entry to practice? Interesting stuff, in my opinion!

Thanks for answering those questions!!! I hope more people answer soon.