Want to be a HOSPICE NP

Dodongo, APRN, NP · Feb 9, 2018

Will I be wasting my time to study children's and womens health when I really just want to work as a hospice nurse practitioner?

Kind of, yeah. Go get all of your clinical hours with adults instead of just a fraction. Getting an FNP does not make you "more marketable" or "give you more options" if you know what specialty or population you want to work with. The only people that say that are the ones who don't know why they want to be NPs and are just hoping to get ANY job when they graduate.

Be trained for what you want to do. So when you walk into an interview you can tell them all of your time was spent learning medicine for that population. It's the same for people that want peds or women's health or psych.

AGNP: ~800 hours

FNP:

PNP: ~800 hours

FNP:

WHNP: ~800 hours

FNP:

PMHNP: ~800 Hours

FNP: 0 hours

ACNP: 800 hours

FNP: 0 hours

friendlylark · Feb 9, 2018

Hello Dodongo! Thank you for the reply. I am looking at the chart you have provided - with regards to the Adult/Gerontology Nurse practitioner ...

I am reading this as the AGNP student spends approximately 800 clinical hours working with the adult/gerontology population and the FNP student spends less than 400 clinical hours working with the adult/gerontology population.

To be honest, I feel that the AGNP would be the most appropriate degree for me (with my goal to work in hospice) ... however, the hospice organization I want to work for also does care for pediatric hospice ... so perhaps the FNP program will be the best choice after all.

Additionally ... I am already IN for this FNP program. I have a start date for Feb 26th with Chamberlain ... and I do NOT want to push my start date back again (already pushed it back once).

I honestly think that ... even if I will dread the pediatric rotations ... my best option is to continue with the FNP program that I am in.

Dodongo, APRN, NP · Feb 9, 2018

...however, the hospice organization I want to work for also does care for pediatric hospice ... so perhaps the FNP program will be the best choice after all.

If you would have to work with children then you either need the FNP or a PNP...

db2xs · Feb 15, 2018

That being said - I don't really like to see/treat children! My favorite population is geriatric and kids are just a bit too unruly for my liking :-) They are cute and sweet (sometimes) ... but let's face it ... kids are just not my calling.
So I guess my bottom line question is this ... is the FNP program right for me? I know that FNP includes children and womens health - where-as I really do hope to focus on adult medicine. Will I be wasting my time to study children's and womens health when I really just want to work as a hospice nurse practitioner?

Hello, OP. We sound similar in that I already know what I want to be doing and it is palliative care/hosice and not pediatrics or women's health. If you are not interested in taking care of women or children, I wonder why you're okay to "waste time" (one semester) studying women's health and pediatrics, but you don't want to wait another semester to get into the AGNP program? They're the same amount of time, so that doesn't make sense to me. The FNP program is not going to have the focused semester of older adults the way that the AGNP program does.

I am assuming you are also Anne Marie from Oregon. If so, I'm curious: If you don't want to work with children, then would you really want to work in pediatric hospice? Just wondering, thanks.

SopranoKris, MSN, RN, NP · Feb 16, 2018

I would strongly caution you not to get your FNP through Chamberlain. I am in the process of transferring to another school due to all the negative changes the school has made over the past 6 months. I regret wasting so much time and money with this school. I had a great experience there with my RN-to-BSN and went with them because I was already familiar with their online platform and could start right away. Ever since I started the program in July, they have completely changed their online platform, they have added required quizzes/exams from a bank of questions which the instructors can't even see. This meant that 80% of the questions we had on our midterm were NOT taught to us by the materials they gave us to study. The ENTIRE class failed the mid-term. I have always been a stellar honors student and I was well-prepared for the exam. However, most of the questions had nothing to do with the lessons, readings and DBs we did to prepare. Not only did our class fail, but the other classes as well.

I belong to a few FB groups for Chamberlain FNP students and *all* of the FNP-track classes had similar issues. This caused my A to drop to a C+ (82.5%). I had to drop the class just to make sure I had "withdrawn - passing" on my transcript. I did some digging and the company which owns Chamberlain has 2 class action lawsuits against them for breach of contract and fraud (Illinois & California). They are in the process of settling out-of-court to avoid the negative publicity. They spend 80% of their educational budget on recruiting new students and only 20% on actual education. Don't be lured in by "you can start NOW!" tactics. I fully & completely regret choosing this school. I was 1/3rd of the way through the program, too. I will now lose half the credits I earned when I transfer elsewhere. However, I no longer have faith that this school has our best interests at heart. They have no vested interest in making sure students pass because the fewer who pass are less who actually sit for boards. They were given a warning due to the % of students failing boards the first time. (Notice they do NOT publicize their board pass rates on their website).

As far as which path you should take, if you want to do both adult & peds hospice, then you'll need the FNP. If you primarily want to work with elderly patients, then get the adult-gero NP. There are schools which offer a Palliative Care sub-specialty, so you can get training specifically for hospice/palliative care in addition to the NP.