I am taking classes towards my BSN because like other nurses with a diploma or ADN I am being "forced" to return to school for my BSN. I have had my ADN for 9 years. My question is HOW is statistics, critical inquiry, and the other classes going to make me a better nurse? Isn't hands on training the best way to learn? I feel like they are requiring BSN now and in 10 years want MSN so that we wont need doctors working on the floors, because nurses will do their own orders!!
I am 42 y/o and rally don't want to do this, but I have a minimum of 23 years left of working and had to be forced to stay where I am due to not having a BSN. Sure they say we may be "grandfathered" in, but that limits us to stay put.
Anyone have any input on this, as to what am I going to learn getting my BSN and why the requirement now?
Would you want your child's teacher to have their job with a 2 year degree?
Why not? I'm pretty sure every state in the union allows a parent to educate their own child at home. As long as the state equates a parent with a minimum level of education to a teacher, they won't get much respect either, but I guess that's a discussion for the breakroom.
Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.
Would you want your child's teacher to have their job with a 2 year degree?
I want my kids teachers to be excellent teachers, to inspire a love of learning into my kids and prepare them very well for what is next. If they do that then what degree they have, or don't have is irrelevant to me.
We all know, or should know, that a degree is only an indicator of one's education. Some of the most successful, and well educated people I have ever met were home schooled by people with no degree in anything.
With the rise of free, online education available I think we are going to see an increase of highly educated, but un-degreed people. One small example, I have never taken a chemistry class in college, yet needed chem credit. I down loaded the complete chemistry 101 from UC Berkley onto my ipod (available for free), listened, watched and learned during my commute, then took and easily passed the CLEP Chemistry exam.
I notice that many of the classes required in bachelors degree programs are aimed at developing cultural awareness.
After high school I spent a year and a half back packing around the world. I worked on a pig farm in Sweden, lived with the family, ate their food and lived their life. I worked in a saw mill in Germany, same thing, lived with German family, ate their food, lived their life. Also worked on a dairy farm in France, was a bartender in the old East Germany, worked on a huge cattle ranch in Argentina, at a crematorium in India while living with the Muslim family of one of the men I worked with, shared a room with his son, slept on a reed mat, ate their food and, with a lack of a tv spend many, many hours in discussion with family members. I also worked at an agricultural university in Thailand, got a job sailing new yachts from were they were hand made in Thailand to the new owners in Australia. Worked as a contract musterer in Queensland (where I met my future wife), spend 5 weeks hitchhiking around New Zealand, was homeless and living on the beach in Fiji and a dozen other jobs and places. I am culturally aware and I don't really consider anyone culturally educated who hasn't been in a cultural immersion situation. That is why the cultural awareness classes I was forced to take in my BSN program seemed like a joke. The content was superficial and the level of discourse pathetic, and as far as I could did not really lead to any cultural awareness on the part of my classmates.
Well look yonder, 205 posts in response to the OP's simple query. Most in one way or another are pretty much have been part of the push in favour or against making the BSN mandatory for entry to practice. This endless cycle of debate within the nursing profession on the matter has been raging for > fifty years.
Meanwhile back at the ranch hospitals seem poised to make the decision *for* the profession and let the chips fall where they may. Life is something that happens while you are busy doing something else, and the fallout from this "BSN preferred/required" mandate is going to be painful in many markets, but much of that probably could have been avoided.
It is deja vue all over again. Most every single argument one reads in posts like this both in favour or against BSN as required for entry one has heard in some form or another from back in the 1980's. The generation or two above me had been hearing them since the 1970's or even 1960's. Yet still the mention of the thing tends more often than not to turn any gathering of nurses into something resembling a bad day at the Harper's Valley PTA.
Had nursing behaved in a manner befitting what it is always claiming to be, a true profession, this matter would have been settled ages ago just as it has with other healthcare professions (in often less time). The issue of grandfathering current RNs and or even students could have been addressed as well. Voids are never good things for history tells us sooner or later something or someone will rise to fill the vacuum. That is what is happening with the BSN, in the absence of any cohesive action from within the profession a scheme is going to be imposed upon it for better or worse.
As things stand today in most major healthcare markets the BSN is required (if not strongly preferred) for new grads and quite possibly current ADN/diploma hires as well. That ship has sailed, the bull is out of the barn, stick a fork in it, it's done..... and that is all there is to it. This is not the 1980's rodeo where a few places tried going all BSN and had to drop the scheme out of a "nursing shortage". As the American healthcare market enters a profound period of change those effects cannot help but affect the nursing profession.
As things stand today in most major healthcare markets the BSN is required (if not strongly preferred) for new grads and quite possibly current ADN/diploma hires as well. That ship has sailed, the bull is out of the barn, stick a fork in it, it's done..... and that is all there is to it. This is not the 1980's rodeo where a few places tried going all BSN and had to drop the scheme out of a "nursing shortage". As the American healthcare market enters a profound period of change those effects cannot help but affect the nursing profession.
My facility does not require, prefer or otherwise a BSN. Haven't heard the first word about it. I can't give more description without revealing where I work, but suffice it to say it's a good hospital in or around Nashville.
My facility does not require prefer or otherwise a BSN. Haven't heard the first word about it. I can't give more description without revealing where I work, but suffice it to say it's a good hospital in or around Nashville.[/quote']
Do you think in 5 years you will say the same thing? 10? 20?
My facility does not require, prefer or otherwise a BSN. Haven't heard the first word about it. I can't give more description without revealing where I work, but suffice it to say it's a good hospital in or around Nashville.
Well long as you is mighty sure that will not change for the duration of your active nursing career, then guess you ain't got nothing to worry about.
I know a previous poster said their place of employment and their area was not pushing for BSNs and I'm not disputing that. I'm just offering the following for thought.
The final tipping point for me to decide to go back was thinking how much less my brain would strain at age 40 than 10 years down the road should things change where I work. BTW, I underestimated the mental slowing that I had experienced since my first run through college. Also, I was starting to work with several nurses who had migrated from around our metroplex to my hospital because it was one of the few NICUs in the area still hiring non-BSN and definitely the only larger one. So, that kind of convinced me that since I've been around long enough to know job situations, conditions, managers change and sometimes you have to move on. I wanted the option to stay in my specialty should that ever happen.
Sad story from another nurse in the area. She is an LPN with about a gazillion years experience in lower acuity NICU. Her hospital decided to make some dramatic changes, combining acuities, new facilities, new management. She didn't like the new setup, didn't like the new management so she quit. She quickly found out that LPNs had been phased out of local hospitals years ago; forget NICU or nursery, or mother-baby. Her options were LTC or acute rehab and even those jobs were hesitant to hire due to her lack of adult experience. She was about 10 years from retirement and her only option seemed to be to go back to school. She was still not working last I heard.
First of all it's not relevant to the discussion I was having. The previous poster made some "tough tooties, Jack" comments about how "BSN as the entry standard is here to stay!" (Really? tell that to North Dakota.) My response was that my hospital, an average sized award winning hospital in a major metropolitan area, hasn't said so much as boo about it. What they do or don't do in the future isn't relevant to my response.
Second, if you'd read my previous post less than one page away, you'd realize why it doesn't matter, for me. I'll go get a BSN and/or MSN, and/or MHA, if and when I see fit, whenever I feel like it, probably when my employer wishes to chip in for it, and not a second sooner.
Specializes in Management, Med/Surg, Clinical Trainer.
My facility does not require, prefer or otherwise a BSN. Haven't heard the first word about it. I can't give more description without revealing where I work, but suffice it to say it's a good hospital in or around Nashville.
The only way to know that for sure is if you are one of the nurses sitting on the hiring committee. BSN required does not have to be written on the job posting for it to be the desired level of entry.
The only way to know that for sure is if you are one of the nurses sitting on the hiring committee. BSN required does not have to be written on the job posting for it to be the desired level of entry.
The way to know that for sure is to be employed there, in administration, and see ASN's hired every day.
redhead_NURSE98!, ADN, BSN
1,086 Posts
Why not? I'm pretty sure every state in the union allows a parent to educate their own child at home. As long as the state equates a parent with a minimum level of education to a teacher, they won't get much respect either, but I guess that's a discussion for the breakroom.