Thinking about becoming a Nurse Practitioner

emtneel · Mar 20, 2008

I did an accelerated program. So I had my first degree BS in Biology/Pre-med. So I was able to get a second BS in 12 months my BSN. I was enrolled in a 3 yr program where you take your GRE to get accepted and you get a BSN after one year and then MS for Nurse Practitioner after 2 more years. University of Miami private school is very expensive so I moved back to Colorado where I am a resident and started my Masters program in August and started my first (and only) RN job on a Pediatric unit in September. I have been working full-time and school full-time (9-13 graduate credits/semester) for past 2.5yrs/7 semesters (incl. summers) and just graduated Dec.07. Looking for my first job as a Family Nurse Practitioner now.

Best just go google.com and type in nurse Practitioner to find out what we do.

yes you can do "babies" if you are family NP you can work outpatient and see all age ranges. you can also do Pediatric NP and work with newborn to 18-21yrs.

If you want L & D then you can become a Midwife and deliver babies.

There are many options. Most schools do not require that you work as a RN first, but most require that you take the GRE test.

If you aren't sure, you may want to work as a Nurse first to see.

Nurse Practitioners make varied amounts, sometimes depending on where you live you can make as much working as a RN as a NP in a different state.

Just like becoming a RN you should not be doing it for the money. Yes everyone needs to make a living but working as a RN is hard work, and you won't last if its only about the money.

There are also statistics online you can look up for actual numbers of salaries for different positions.

Neelia

lmRNstudent08 · Mar 20, 2008

Definitely not doing this for the money, but I was just curious. I would have quit school already because of the difficulty level if it was just for the money. Well in May of 2010 I will have a BS in Nursing and will be an RN. All I will need is a MS after May- so from what I gathered from your information I have to go to school 2 years for my MS?

DaisyRN, ACNP · Mar 21, 2008

hi there,

most msn, np programs take 2-3 years, but there is definitely some other circumstances. i applied for special admission to my msn, np program and was accepted in may 06, started in may 06, and graduated dec 07.

there are many options for nurse practitioners... i would suggest you look at http://www.aanp.org or your state's np site to see what types of nps are out there. plus you can go to a school's website and often find a great deal of information about the programs and descriptions. that is where i found the most information in making my decision to do acute care. you can pretty much choose any age group to specialize in: neonatal, pediatric, adult, and geriatric. there are also family, women's health, and acute care nps (adult or pediatric). i would suggest browsing through or searching this board for more answers to some of your questions, as some of them have exhaustive discussions. since you are a student, you should have access to online journals. advance for nurse practitioners recently published a salary survey that may be available to you through your school's library.

good luck!

definitely not doing this for the money, but i was just curious. i would have quit school already because of the difficulty level if it was just for the money. well in may of 2010 i will have a bs in nursing and will be an rn. all i will need is a ms after may- so from what i gathered from your information i have to go to school 2 years for my ms?

SWTNES · Apr 8, 2008

Congrats to you for finishing under 2 years. I am thinking of doing the ACNP and then CRNA where did you go for your ACNP. Was it hard to find a preceptor?

Thanks,

Barbra

TSchmitt · Jun 18, 2009

Don't ever dismiss salaries in nursing as a consideration. If the profession is to advance so must the salaries. The best and the brightest do not work for free, they can not afford to. Advanced education requires a six figure investment now (tuition and lost income while doing it) and there needs to be a pay off. I am looking at NP schools as well and the pressure I am receiving to just apply to medical school makes me really reconsider. You have to love what you do if you are going to spend years in secondary education to get there and then decades doing it for sure. When nurses say you should not be doing it for the money they are really putting down the profession saying what we do is not valued. To heck with that. Patients come to the hospital for nursing care, not doctor care. Otherwise they would be doing open heart surgery at your local mall. Nurses are the back bone of the healthcare system and there is a culture of keeping nurses in their place to keep costs down and profits high; unfortunately alot of this comes from nurses with advanced degrees. Nurses deserve their share of the pie, since they do a significant amount of the work. Get some real life experience as a nurse before you apply to a NP school.

magnolia nurse · Jun 22, 2009

I have a MSN and have applied to Tennesse State to their holistic NP (apparently there are only 4 in the US and I don;t know where the rest are) program I am just waiting to hear if I got in.. I really was thinking about getting a PhD but miss the patient contact and I want to teach the public about alternative methods of health as treatment modalities..

drfitness · Jun 22, 2009

I like this thread alot and all the responses are very helpful. I agree with T.Shmitt that one should not diregard salaries when considering the nursing profession. I was accepted into a direct entry program( tuition alone is 100K and it is a full time program) and decided to defer a year due to the fact that I want to truly make sure this is the career for me to change into. ( I am currently in the Health care field as well). The field I am now, although I love and it pays me well, it entails alot of physical work and I feel in about 10 years I will be done with it physically. I heard from many people that the fields of Nurse Practicioning and Physican Assistants are big for the future and now. I would only make a career change if I felt that I could have financial security and more oppurtunities than I currently have in my field. But one thing that concerns me is that I want to make sure I would be truly HAPPY in that field. I want to ask the NPs out there if they are happy with their careers?? I, will most likely be focusing on the FNP tract. Your honesty is appreciated. THanks!

Joe NightingMale, MSN, RN · Jun 23, 2009

Patients come to the hospital for nursing care, not doctor care. Otherwise they would be doing open heart surgery at your local mall. Nurses are the back bone of the healthcare system and there is a culture of keeping nurses in their place to keep costs down and profits high; unfortunately alot of this comes from nurses with advanced degrees. Nurses deserve their share of the pie, since they do a significant amount of the work. Get some real life experience as a nurse before you apply to a NP school.

You should have been in my last seminar class, we had discussions just like that!

westcoastgirl · Jun 26, 2009

Don't ever dismiss salaries in nursing as a consideration. If the profession is to advance so must the salaries.

Amen to that! there is often such tiptoeing around this topic and it saddens me often it's the nurses (RN or NP) doing it to each other. Look around at what pharmacists, hygienists, other folks make and it'll make you very sad.

Back to the topic. I enjoy my job. So do my PA counterparts. I will say this for them, their schooling has prepared them as far better negotiators than NPs from my personal experience. I know PAs and NPs doing identical work at same employer with 25k+ salary difference because the NPs didn't negotiate and did not value themselves enough to understand they should get paid.

SandBetweenMyToes, BSN, RN · Jun 27, 2009

Westcoastgirl...in your opinion how does one learn to negotiate like the PA's? How do you find out what you are worth? And how do you negotiate for more in a profession (nursing) that seems to want to hold onto old ideas about what nurses should earn? Heady questions, I know, but I seriously want to learn these things before I graduate as an NP. Thanks!

core0 · Jun 27, 2009

Westcoastgirl...in your opinion how does one learn to negotiate like the PA's? How do you find out what you are worth? And how do you negotiate for more in a profession (nursing) that seems to want to hold onto old ideas about what nurses should earn? Heady questions, I know, but I seriously want to learn these things before I graduate as an NP. Thanks!

The AAPA does a transition to practice series for PA students. Also the business aspect (transition to practice etc. is a required part of the coursework). They also have Salary surveys that cover most areas and specialties. So for a new PA student its relatively easy to see what they are worth. For example when interviewed I asked for a salary profile for Surgical Subspecialty PAs in Atlanta. This gave me the average salary with percentiles for year groups. So when I got a lowball offer I was able to give them competitive salary information that they couldn't refute.

The AANP is starting to develop this but is far behind and hasn't published any of the data as far as I know. The other issue that I notice is that at least around here most of the didactic is taught by instructors from the college of nursing. Most of my instruction was from PAs and MDs that were in practice. This was invaluable in explaining how the real world works.

In part it really goes back to standards. The PA educational model is standardized in what you have to cover. In the NP world this is left up to the individual programs. Some do better than others.

David Carpenter, PA-C