RN-BSN Completion Advice

I would like to hear from RN's who have gone on to complete their BSN programs.

Could you, that are BSN's, explain to me what additional opportunities or personal fulfillment came with achieving this next step in your education? Tell me some of your motivators. Advise me on taking on too much too fast? If I take a break, what are my chances of returning as so many don't. Is this course load at the junior/senior level too much while working full time (taking into consideration that I don't usually struggle with learning).

Stella--Ohio, I am also from Ohio (born and raised) and got my BSN through the BSN completion program at Cleveland State University in 1986. I never regreted my decision to go back to school. I heard all the negative comments about going back to school also and it delayed my return to school for a number of years. I originally was licensed in 1975 and, as you can see, it was 11 years until I got my BSN.

I guess my primary motivation was that I wanted a bachelor's degree and since I was already in nursing and BSs were offered in nursing, that's the way I went. Only you can know if you are moving too fast. Do what your gut tells you. If you decide to wait, I wouldn't wait too long. By the time I got into Cleveland State they were requiring me to take Anatomy and Physiology over because it had been 10 years since I had last taken it. I also had to fulfill some fine arts and math requirements that the School of Arts and Sciences required for a bachelors degree. CSU also had a foreign language requirement that a bunch of my BSN classmates had to fulfill at the last minute in order to graduate. I knew that school would interfere with work, so I had kind of planned for that. I was able to work full-time during my junior year. However, for the senior year level classes I only committed to working part time 3 days a week in order to be able to get my classwork done (a lot of writing). If I had the time I would call in to work and volunteer myself for prn time. The hospital never turned down any extra time that I was able to work for them (are you kidding!). But, the part time work gave me that opportunity to devote more time to my studies.

I think that what you (think) you lack in nursing experience is more than balanced by your maturity. While you will perhaps learn some new hands on nursing stuff in a BSN program, the focus is more toward enriching what you already know. You will go a little more indepth on supervision and management of patient care. I was one of only three staff nurses in our BSN program. Everyone else was already in supervision or management and were back in school because their hospitals were requiring them to have a BSN. I think that made a big difference in how we perceived the importance of our education.

The personal fullfillment for me was that it gave me a new outlook on my profession. It saved me from the brink of burnout. As one of my instructors at CSU told me, I was learning more things to put in my bag of tricks when I carried it in to a patient's room. Within a few months of getting my BSN I was invited by my employers (they asked me!) to become a nursing supervisor. I was told by the nursing administrators that they had seen a huge change in me since going back to school and finishing my BSN. In subsequent jobs I was quickly moved into supervision or administrative positions. I prefer, however, to work personally with patients and sometimes hear the criticism that I am "over-qualified". I just laugh to myself when I hear that. You see, one of the outcomes of a bachelor level education is that you learn to think and process independently and to constantly ask the question, "why" and try to answer it. My education also empowered me to do something about things that I saw might be wrong and the tools with which to do it.

There is another part to doing a BSN that I don't hear a lot of other nurses talking about. That is that you are pursuing a bachelors degree level of study. You are not just doing the nursing part. Don't short change that part of your education. What a bachelor degreee education does for you is help you be become a more independent thinker, a bit of an expert at finding information on your own (we were told tiime and again that this is a skill that would be of biggest help if we went on for a Master's degree), and a great writer of term papers! :rotfl: Between the research (information finding) and writing I can whip out a term paper in a few days! When I want to find out more about a nursing topic or a new medication or procedure I usually have a real good idea of where to start and, if needed, who to go to for assitance in getting that information. If you are in the Cleveland area (you didn't mention where you are in Ohio), get familiar with the Health Sciences library at Case-Western Reserve University. It is separate from the Allen Library which is the medical college library. They have just about every professional journal published by all the different health science careers. It is an awsome place and I spent a lot of time there both while I was a student at CSU and afterward whenever I needed to get information on something healthcare related.

Finally, what I will say to you is this. Long after you leave the job you are currently at, the comments people made to you about getting a BSN will be long forgotten. However, what you will have is your degree in your hand. When you go shopping around for another job, you will see how important that degree is. Some places won't pay you any more than any other staff nurses, but you will sure be treated a lot more respectfully. It's not so much because it's a BSN, but because it's a bachelor's degree. I'm not crazy about you taking classes at your place of employement (especially if your employer is paying for any of this) because I would worry about them having some control over the content of what you are taught. I am a big advocate of getting away from where you are in order to be exposed to other viewpoints and thinking. That, I believe, is how we expand our minds. However, that is just a personal viewpoint. I did my original nursing program in California and specifically sought out an eastern university for my BSN for that reason.

A very wise asian classmate of mine always used to say this when we got a little depressed over our load of schoolwork: no one can take your education away from you. You get your BSN for yourself, Stella, not for your employer or your co-workers. Such is the advice of this 55-year old.

I had to respond back.

I know ONU very well. My niece graduated from there recently. It's a good school, but you're right--it's in the middle of a cow pasture. Beside law, they are very big into the sciences. I found the instructors and professors in a university to be a bit different from those in a junior college. I found the professors at Cleveland State, especially in my BSN nursing program, to be more in a counseling mode and more willing to buddy up with us. We met weekly with the individual professor we were assigned to where we discussed our clinical experiences and any concerns we had.

Go for charge nurse or preceptor. It will add a dimension to your career that you would have never experienced otherwise. You supervised your kids. I'm sure there were many times when things came up with your kids that you just had no answer as to how to handle them. But, you did the best you could and learned from them. Supervision and administration are no different. Same thing, different channel. I was scared to death of supervision and management, but yearned for it from a distance. For years I thought I wasn't good enough for it. What I have learned is that supervision is a skill that you never stop learning. In many ways of your life you are involved in some degree of supervision. When I became a supervisor and eventually a nurse manager I can honestly tell you that there probably wasn't one day that went by where I wasn't mulling over whether or not I took the right action with regard to an employee. You do not learn it all in school. This is where your life experience and problem solving skills come in. This is where a little psychology and some knowledge of assertiveness can be a big help.

Good supervision starts with being a good, respectful person. People with negative attitudes and criticizing natures do not generally make it into management and supervision unless they were able to somehow hide these character traits before getting their positions. In management and supervision you constantly have to think about what you are saying to people and how it is going to affect them. I get such a kick out of watching The Apprentice on TV and watching those young executives deal with leadership. They are just learning it too and their sense of esteem about their abilities just blows me away. They make a lot of mistakes, and in front of millions of people. If you fall off the horse, you get back on. If you fall down, don't just sit there and cry, get back up on your feet and try again. I was taught that I should deal with people in a way that if I ran into them at the grocery store we would be able to have a nice conversation without any hard feelings between us. It is so much easier to catheterize someone or start an IV than be a leader and supervisor of people, believe me. But, it is the next logical step of your career.

I think I may have said something the wrong way in my last post. Your hospital really doesn't have any say in the curriculum. That is pretty much a cut and dry issue determined by the NLN. I always worry about things getting too parochial. Did you see Dead Poets Society where Robin Williams has his students stand on top of his desk and look at the world from a different perspective? That is what I was trying to get at. Getting fresh viewpoints is always very stimulating for the mind.

Don't let the term papers put you off. Generally, we had a syllabus that was very specific about what the instructor wanted in the paper. A lot of them were really more like 20 page reports. The APA and MLA publish guides on how to set up papers their way. Most college bookstores have them or you can order them from one of the chain bookstores. There is also lots of help on the Internet. Some of our papers were care plans (my longest was 45 pages, with references and footnotes!) and process recordings complete with our own editorial comments and self-criticism. The only true term paper I had was one written for our group behavior class. The dean of the nursing program taught it and demanded we put it in APA style with footnoting and references to supplemental texts. That class, by the way, was an eye-opener. We learned about game playing and the different roles people take in group meetings. I have since gone to meetings with a different view of the participants.

I worried about all this before starting classes. There were two other nurses in my hospital who were a year ahead of me in CSU's program. I got through it and so will you.

And, lastly, if no one ever asked "why?" I don't think we would make any progress in this world. Don't stop asking it. Constantly self evaluate your performance on your job--it makes you better. If you make a mistake or feel you could have done something in a better way, cogitate on it and try to figure out how to do it better the next time. This is another way to use the nursing process. This is how you will grow. The nursing process (collect data, develop a plan of care, put it into action, evaluate) is not exclusive to nursing. It is a problem solving skill that can be translated into all walks of life. I think because this process is so ingrained in a nurse's performance along with the ability to change horses in midstream as a situation demands that it is the reason that nurses who leave the profession become so successful in others. This ability to evaluate, adjust and apply what you know to situations is what employers really treasure. You can be taught this process, but it means nothing if you don't use it and perfect it.

Phew! I'm going to bed now. Good luck to you.

After 14 years as bedside staff nurse and charge nurse I've decided to complete my BSN. I don't know what opportunities it's going to afford me, but there's going to come a day when I'm not going to be running up and down these hallways pulling and tugging on patients. I'll surrender that to youth and move on. The BSN will offer me opportunities in the furture to move away from the bedside.

I can understand your hesitancy. As an ADN nurse, I've done very well for myself in a wide variety of nursing situtations. Sometimes, I wonder why BSN for perhaps little reward.

Good for you! Education is never wasted. It expands your mind. Within a few months of getting my BSN I was promoted into supervision. It was the best job I ever had. I felt like I was able to put all my nursing to use in that job. I have since felt that every nurse should have a chance to be a supervisor. I got to see the bigger picture of how the hospital was run. And, boy, was it eye-opening. However, without the BSN I probably wouldn't have had that opportunity.

I am very proud of my bachelor's degree and use every opportunity to haul it out and show it around. I think it's very pretty, too, since Cleveland State's colors (green and white) are part of it. One job I had actually wanted a photo of it for my personnel file! What a rush for me that they were interested in actually seeing it.