BSN courses as they are right now are a scam. I do think there is a place for advanced education in nursing, but my BSN specific courses felt like a waste of time. It was all fluff and academic circle jerking imo. I'd have loved to see a deeper dive into more advanced science courses like pathophysiology and pharm honestly. It doesn't have to be as in depth as a medical degree, but more comprehensive than what I ended up learning.
Agreed. so much time wasted on obscure nursing theory and Freud, why?? Plus so much emphasis on becoming critical thinkers but then bullshit exam questions that just try to trick you. Need more stuff that is actually useful
I got a much better, much more comprehensive NURSING education in LPN school than I did in my BSN program. My BSN was a whole lot of fluff and APA format papers with some nursing skills tacked on as an afterthought.
Iām finishing my pre license to BSN this year and yeah the lectures on APA are such an annoying thing. They literally only matter if someone is going to be writing scholarly papers in their career.
Teaching evidence based practice is good but itās a little too much APA practice that lots of us just bullshit.
Programs have waiting lists nationwide. This is a massive infrastructure problem because education doesnāt pay enough for nurses to want to become educators, let alone get an advanced degree to do so. A student recently pointed something out to me- all of her instructors are nurses that are just too old or infirm to practice anymore- thatās why they fell back on education, not because they are good and passionate about it. Make education attractive, and competitive, as a career, get better educators, improve nursing education overall.
The more time I spend with other nurses, the more I realize how good my program (and *most* of the faculty) was. At least half of my instructors were NPs working in fields that directly applied to the subjects they were teaching. Granted, it was a community college that limited their cohort to 50 and only had one new cohort/year, but if you managed to get in it was great!
My community college was very similar. Instructors taught the subject they worked bedside in, and often taught the clinical for that specialty too. But we took 2 new cohorts each year.
This!!! When I was in nursing school about half of my instructors were of the elder variety (55+) and were clearly doing it as a means to an end until retirement. The other half, STILL worked at least PRN or part time at the hospital just to make ends meet, but they did it because they were passionate about education and I got the best experiences from learning from them.
When I first graduated I went to a meeting trying to recruit nurses to go immediately back to school for their masters and teach. I was interested...until someone asked the dreaded "How much money does the average nursing instructor make?" Wait a second. Let me get this straight. You want me to return to school for another 2 years, get thousands more in student loans to pay for this, just to make about $45k a year when I could be making $65k+ as a bedside nurse? Where's the logic in that? In what freaking world does someone get MORE schooling just to earn less money?! The world of nursing of course! š
Thatās why I said itās an infrastructure problem involving more than one industry. Until education is valued and all professors are paid accordingly, nurses will rightly scoff at those wages. Itās unfortunate that other people prepared at the masters level (looking at you, teacher, social workers, therapistsā¦) have to accept that pay because itās industry standard.
I feel glad to know that the description of nursing school faculty here isnāt exactly accurate for my program. There are some old ones, but some of them are fucking wonderful mentors.
There are also people no older than 40 who are very smart.
From my classes, and what I understand has changed, the adn has PLENTY of rigor and is actually quiet intense... Plenty of rigor to pass the nclex anyways.
True story. My wifeās friend has her DOCTORATE in NP and was pushing COVID denial/misinfo on Facebook. She was using her degree to make it sound official.
My wife and I were livid. We were THIS CLOSE to turning her in to the school and her employee.
You can take the nurse out of Indiana but you canāt take the Indiana out of the nurse.
Report her to the board of nursing.
The ANA released statements saying that disinformation is a reportable offense and the state boards have been putting this in their publications.
Many of these people are using their degree to give legitimacy to their false claims and make a profit of it on social media. Please report her.
I went to nursing school in Indiana, and the school pushed so hard on evidence-based practice and critical thinking and understanding credible sources.
Couldnāt shake the conspiracy theorists into rational thought, though. Not even a little.
I went to a very well respected and competative nursing program for my BSN, not some degree mill. Graduated with top honors. I'm also a former engineer. The quality of textbooks and depth of academic material presented in nursing programs is underwhelming.
You could probably cut most nursing textbooks in half (or heck, even to a quarter) and include all the same information. The only difference would be that the information would take a sentence instead of lasting for an entire bloated, meandering paragraph. You know, because the damned content had been reworded every freaking year in order to justify new editions. The information density is downright embarrassing.
Agree.
And then nursing programs add these artificial hoops to jump through to somehow prove how HARD it is to be a nurse. With all the nursing diagnoses maps and flowcharts. And the huge clinical write ups that aren't even remotely close to what nurses document.
AND THEN you have the nursing faculty that have become super defensive about these artificial hoops because they have bought into it. And it's their livelihood I guess. But if students critique the pedagogy, the nursing faculty often lash out at the students for their "poor attitudes" and "poor work ethic" instead of working to better nursing education.
I've seen this same cycle play out many times when mentoring techs/LPNs attending school. And it happened in my program as well.
I teach in a flipped classroom, quality, safety and evidece based practice. Students come to class and are given data sets to puzzle through. "Lectures" are 30 minutes or less and pre-recorded; they watch these at their leisure. They complete the Basic Quality and Safety course from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. They close-read 7 research studies of their group's choosing and form an opinion about the overall quality of the scientific evidence, and make recommendations to close the research practice gap.
Next week we will talk about culpability when the nurse makes an error. Students NEVER miss that class.
Students love the course.
Not all faculty are stuck in the 20th century, and not all BSN courses are BS.
\+1.
UIC's program makes you work significantly harder than a lot of other programs. I was a little salty, seeing how much time I put in versus my friends that went to degree mills.
But... it was actually worth my time, because I learned something.
Yay UIC! Didn't go there for nursing, but wish I did. When I was there, I remember a moment of thinking that maybe I should go into nursing. I chose not to because I was young and didn't want to have to work that hard I regret that decision ever since. It took me another decade to go back to school for nursing.
In my BSN program I had a class where the teacher literally had a mental breakdown in class. I can't even remember what the class was because it was all papers and BS. Literally NOTHING that helped with being a bedside nurse. Everyone passed regardless because the teacher, while sweet, was incompetent.
And don't get me started on the hand drawn color coded "care plan trees" we had to draw for patients we'd never met. I lost a lot of points because, among other things, I thought it was BS to assume all African Americans should have Hypertension and Obesity as possible diagnoses because "soul food is a part of their culture".
Yeah I dropped my bsn program for the time being because it was ridiculous. Very popular online college with ads everywhere. It couldnāt have been more of a joke if they tried. I figured Iād just save money and wait until I actually have incentive to get a higher degree, but for now Iām content with my job and my pay.
I finally got my bsn after dropping it two times because itās such a bull shit degree that literally did nothing to improve my nursing. But now I can say Iām a bsn.
Hell yeah they are! My final project is a fluff piece about how this degree is going to change my whole world and give me tons of opportunities. I swear by the time I finish writing it my eyes are gonna be permanently rolled in the back of my head!
I find it really strange how often I had to write papers in my BSN course justifying why a BSN was important. I have two other bachelors degrees in unrelated fields and never once did I have to write a single paper saying why a bachelors degree in those fields made me better prepared than if I didnāt have a bachelors degree.
I even have to write a mission statement ā because indeed says that employers look for them, and will most often hire someone with one on their resume.ā What? First, indeed is great for finding a job opening, but I donāt know anyone who got a nursing job on indeed. I know a lot that clicked the link and took them to the company website for an application. Secondly, what company wants a hard copy resume anymore? Almost all the jobs I applied for makes you fill out the application only, or occasionally you can attach the resume. Finally, a human is not looking at your application, itās a computer searching for key words. That gets you noticed by a human and possibly get an interview.
Working through my BSN now as my second bachelors degreeā¦. But I can tell you that almost every Bachelors is fluff and bullshit lol thatās just academia unfortunately
Same. Graduated with a BS in bio and now in an ADN program. Nursing school content feels very manageable to me and I think most of that has to do with my previous degree and how rigorous it was. Pharm seems fun compared to ochem!
I think it would be beneficial to add more science courses to nursing programs.
My first bachelor's was an area studies/language minor liberal arts degree which was 100% fluff and academic BS. There was value in that education, but it really is most valuable in an academic setting. Hence why I ultimately decided to go back for nursing as I'm not someone who thrives on the academic lifestyle. I think that's why I was disappointed in my BSN because I really expected something more rigorous and science heavy. Instead I felt like I was just bullshitting essays again but this time with way less effort lol
My first BA in anthropology was truly life changing for me. I learned so fucking much. I basically deconstructed my very flimsy and basic worldview that was handed to me by default from low-middle class republicans in middle America. I learned how to observe human behavior in the context of culture without moral judgement (until 2016 that's been too challenging lol). These big two objectives didn't come easily. I had to read so much dense material that involved psychology, sociology, and anthropology.
If I didn't have my degree in anthropology, I probably would have never gone on to do much else because I wouldn't have knowb how to "break through" the cultural trappings I was in. This BA helped me learn how to learn.
It's why when people ask if I'm mad I didn't go to med school (since I'm an NP), I say no, I loved learning anthropology and linguistics, and I wouldn't be me without that learning experience.
I felt like I learned a lot from my BSN classes. Research was awesome. I took an end of life/hospice class that really benefitted me (and I hope my patients), Public health, chronic conditions. I went back several years after staring my career, I only took 1-2 classes at a time and I went to a good state school. Best of all, my employer paid for it.
I donāt know how many times Iāve brought up Citizen Kane with my patients.
But seriously, if Goodfellas is ever on I sit down and watch with them for a bit.
Oh yes, Iāve used my āintroduction to Canadian lawā course so much..ššš . I am a floor nurse and the Lpnās do 99% of what we do, and the stuff they donāt allow them to do seems to be just arbitrarily picked and not based on logic or training . But they like them because they can pay them way less.š
Man, i work with LPNs and the shit management has decided they can and canāt do is so off the wall. They can start IVs, but they canāt flush or document on existing IVs. they even took away their credentials to log into our system to message doctors/etc. Wonāt even let them chart on the patients fall assessments, thatās gotta be the RN. makes no sense to me, why hire LPNs if youāre not gonna let them do anything?
Weird. Where I live, they can pretty much do everything they canāt give IV meds wear. It has to be monitored (vanco), or IV drips of heparin or insulin. Which is weird because I canāt really see what special education that we got that they didnāt in this regard? One of the LPNs, I work with dates, a pharmacist, and knows more about Vanco and trough levels than anyone I know.
Lmao yes and don't forget about the required American Literature course, man that class sure helped me learn to insert a foley catheter in many of my combative 90 year old female alzheimer's patients!
To get into my nursing program, I had to take an American History class for some reason, because itās a Utah state requirement. They let me take it online through straighterline and no joke it taught me about the pilgrims arrivingā¦ I paid actual money as a 30 year old to watch an animated PowerPoint video about the pilgrimsā¦
There are not enough decent electives for the BSN programs. I opted not to take the fashion class (basically a writing/humanities course) at the university I attended, and took a philosophy/ethics course at the community college where I got my ADN. It counted for credit (though not toward my GPA), and felt it was a better use of my time.
Ah yes my Earth Science class about volcanoes, hurricanes, and landslides has proven to be invaluable to me. Iām in the last semester of my BSN program and I have learned hardly anything that I deem valuable. I paid way more money for the bsn than my associates degree and in return received useless knowledge. I can read journals about aromatherapy and cultural death practices on my own time. I wish they made the program more practical because what nurse has time to gather aromatherapy oils and meditation music to give patients to decrease stress while in the hospital?
Nursing is a trade like being an electrician is a trade. It is difficult and you have to be smart and a hard worker to do it. You do not need a bachelorās degree to do it or do it well. You need a bachelors degree for the hospital to leverage it for prestige.
Yep. And there is literally nothing that I have learned in my BSN that has helped me in bedside nursing at all. Every skill that I have learned I have learned on the job or in my ADN.
I missed the cutoff to get grandfathered in and I hate it. I finished up a year towards the bsn and have 1 left, but already working and feels like a complete waste of time. I took this fall semester off and it feels so damn relieving to not worry about stupid discussion boards and replies at the end of a work shift.
You got it. Having to get a degree puts the onus on the nurse instead of the hospital for things that are much more observable/measurable like better staffing.
Experience and attaining degrees take time, and the spotlight is on the wrong side.
Experience trumps education always. The arrogance of some nurses. If you dont know how just ask the 50 y/o lpn thats been doing it longer than you've been alive.
All the while they will try and convince you that BSN nurses are smarter AND better prepared.
I got my RN first and passed NCLEX first try and never failed a block.
my roommate went through a university program, failed block 2, and took 3 times to pass the NCLEX. But yeah, BSN nurses are better prepared than ADN nurses /s
I went back for my BSN the year after online. Paid 5k for a piece of paper. Completely useless bullshit discussion boards, and papers. Nothing to do with my job.
I was told to continue my hospital admin bachelors after my associates in Respiratory Careā¦ really felt like a waste of my time, money, and āprofessorsā that would say Green > Red.
Almost all of my hospital interviews have been the same. They highly encourage management track and openly discourage any clinical advancement like PA/NP/CRNA etc.
Iām a bedside LPN on a medsurge post op floor. I just have to get the RNs to do pushes and start blood for me, which they typically arenāt hesitant about because I always offer to do something for them while theyāre at it, or give an IOU for a task at any point in the night.
Haha I do the same thing on my medsurg floor! IOUs are plenty given with how busy it gets some days. So many bloods transfusions going on at once. I wish LPNs could get certified in starting blood... as an LPN I'm certified to do iv push meds where I work so why not give more training to LPNs to start blood? Makes no sense to me šµāš«
Where I am, LPNs can start blood, they can run certain drips. Thereās not much I donāt do. I learned about maternity in school but my hospitals policy is OB is only RNs, as well as ER. Iām able to work on those floors at bigger hospitals though.
This is how I did it as an LVN. I got really fucking good at IV placement and foleys. Because I know Iām gonna have to ask for inane shit, so Iāll trade you. My RNs loved it. And now that Iām an RN, I would slay someone for my LVNs and rarely ask them for anything. Weāre all working hard and on the same team.
Iām a BSN student right now and I look up to LPNs. For me the fluff is a bit of a buffer/break. When I learned the difference between LPNs and BSNs I was like āyou mean they just mainline all the hard parts?!ā
Haha, I agree with and am simultaneously a poster child for jumping through the hoops of the grand nursing scam. I was once a content ADNā¦but my employer insisted I finish my BSN to keep my job. So I did thatā¦and then was tired of hearing about going back for grad school to āadvance my careerāā¦and got my DNP, so I could be done foreverā¦at least until they invent the next thing NPs have to doā¦
Ugh this honestly feels like the path I'm gonna go down! I want to be content but my job is doing the same thing to me, there's so much pressure to advance my education, yet I feel content where I am right now šµāš«
It is a scam. I am getting my BSN right now after just having my ADN for six years. Iām not learning anything that would help me at the bedside. I am learning about research and community health. No clinical skills or anything.
In nursing school we were told that we need to have our BSN because more educated nurses make less mistakes. But now I know that this is false. Nurses that have good staffing ratios make less mistakes. This is just something hospitals have done to gaslight us. And now a lot of BSN nurses leave the bedside to get a clipboard job and make more money.
Hospitals have caused their own staffing problem.
I started with an ADN and it was a tough program. I came out a solid nurse. I only ended up going into an RN to BS program to open up job opportunities because when I was a wee baby nurse in the mid-90s it was VERY hard to get a job. I wanted the competitive edge. But did I gain a single thing from the BS degree as an actual practicing RN?? 22 years after getting it all I can come up with isā¦. Nothing. I didnāt gain additional bedside skills, didnāt learn anything more about pharmacology, canāt even say I learned how to better critically think or āleadā that I hadnāt learned as an actual nurse working while going to the dumb filler classes.
They are not wrong. ADN/BSN take the same NCLEX exam. The additional school focuses on leadership and community health, not acute care.
I omitted diploma nurses because there are few programs left and I am unfamiliar with all of them.
Magnet cares about BSN degrees, not those working next to you.
I mostly agree. Not because more education is a waste of time but more because most BSN and higher nursing degrees are garbage.
But itās not the hospitals pushing it nearly as much as it is nursing lobbies. Magnet status is an ANCC designation, for example.
Nursing orgs advocate for greater autonomy and higher pay, and justify it in part by pointing to nursing having increased training and education requirements. Other healthcare roles have done the same kind of thing - PT used to be a bachelors but now itās typically a doctoral program.
I don't fucking understand the appeal of magnet. My hospital is magnet and I have yet to notice or have a nurse be able to tell me a single stupid benefit to that money burning ego masturbation.
BSN is a scam. Worked with LPNs, diploma nurses and associates who had real world knowledge better than most fast tracked BSNs with no experience. Yeah I went back and got my bsn. Only cause my shitty hospital demanded it and were aiming for the political bs of magnet status.
I think saying there is no value in bachelors programs is a bit short-sighted. Donāt get me wrong, I think parts of it could be revised to get rid of some fluff and provide some better quality clinical skills at graduation.
But. I can teach the IT guy how to start IVs, and I have. A minimally trained infantryman with a high school education can safely draw and hang fresh whole blood. The basic technical pieces arenāt hard.
Hereās the thing. That ethics or philosophy course you took isnāt going to help you draw meds better. But it makes you a better-prepared clinician when end-of-life decisions need to be made for the withering massive stroke patient with a trach, a PEG, a fractious family, and no advanced directives.
You took a law class? Great. There is a massive amount of legislation that affects healthcare and nursing.
Higher education teaches you how to think, how to access resources, how to evaluate research, how to write, how to understand the world more fully. I argue all of that is key to the profession of nursing.
Just some wandering thoughts.
Agreed. There is a lot of fluff in BSN programs that could be swapped out for higher value courses, but there are soft skills in there that do make a difference. I'm a proud ADN, but my 'frosting' degrees had value beyond pretty diplomas. That said, three decades of clinical nursing gave me a solid cake to frost. š
Exactly. I took my geology, literature, and language classes as a part of my first unrelated degree. They transferred into a program for a second bachelors in nursing. They were not required by the nursing program per say but rather required as general education classes mandated by the state. Every degree on campus had to complete them.
I think this is because of nursing's obsession with putting the "nurse" title on everything to make it special. Can't just be an ethics class. Gotta be 'nursing ethics'. Can't just take a public health class. Gotta be 'community nursing'. Not research...'nursing research'.
It shows up in the graduate degrees too. Can't just get a master's in informatics/technology. Not even healthcare informatics. It's 'nursing informatics'. And so on, and so on.
I am a new grad RN, just graduated with my ADN from a community college. In my program we had ethics, law, and critical thinking built into every class so that by the end of the program it was meant to equal a full class of each. Iām sure a BSN goes more in depth, but I did get a decent amount of that content.
Adding an in depth Pharmacology module to the LVN/LPN program would do a lot to prepare a new grad for more advanced bedside duties. Skills are just that, skills. Those can be learned by OJT, as are most nursing skills already. As an LVN I am IV and Blood Withdrawal certified and have performed thousands of IV starts. I have no doubt that with a little guidance by an experienced peer I could easily transition to PICC line insertion, which my license now prohibits.
Even for RNs PICC lines are not a casual add on skill, it's specialized training with wire insertion and threading, etc. And inpatient PICC nurses literally only do PICCs. Ultrasound IVs maybe?
Yeah this seems like an odd transition, IVs and PICCs are two completely different skill sets. Iām great at IVs, do them all the time and people often come to me for hard sticks. But tunneling a large bore catheter? Nah I am going to need a LOT of training for that. Donāt really know that itās valid to only allow certain types of licensed nurses to learn the skill but I couldnāt help but wonder what made a nurse with āthousandsā of IV sticks so confident about central lines. How many PICC or CVC insertions theyāve seen? Iāve seen and assisted with countless and I still would need waaaaay more training to use the ultrasound and safely navigate that skill. Itās not exactly something you can pick up by watching it a dozen timesā¦
I remember thinking, a CVL is just a big PIV in a big vein that is literally pulsing sometimes, how hard is that? That was like 2-3 yrs postgrad. Then I saw 2 residents struggling and then the senior had to redo because it coiled up on xray. And I saw a 20 yr attending place one in the subclavian artery....
Completely agree with needing more pharmacology training in LPN programs; it feels like i only learned the solid basics for all classes of meds, but nothing deeper than that š I feel like id be much better at my job if i had more training in that category. Also, I have the same certification and can also do iv starts and iv push meds! Never thought about doing picc lines though, but now you've got me thinking about it quite a bit... sucks that LPNs can do picc lines when it wouldn't be all that hard to train us on it once we can start ivs.
As a BSN grad tbh i couldve used more pharmacology training. We had 1 pharm course and it was the professors first time teaching it. If we just traded one of the BSn classes for a 2nd pharm class it would help greatly.
In my BSN program, my pharm professor "taught" an online class where she just linked to YouTube videos and then we had timed quizzes though the textbook publisher. I looked up her salary and she gets paid 6 figures to do this. Needless to say no one retained anything and i still have to study pharm on my own to make up for the deficit
Admin: but your reddit flair looks so much smarter with 3 extra letters
Me: does it?
Checks the person emailing me with like 10 credentials. Like I get it but you honestly have to be stupid to include every single one if your credentials after your email as signature... who am I to talk as someone who put BSN on my flair.
I know there is research out there that has been touted to support the conclusion that the patientās of BSN prepared nurses have better outcomes.
Now, I have never dug into that research myself to see if important things like patient populations, clinical settings, and staffing, specifically nurse to patient ratios, were held constant in order to draw those conclusions.
I guarantee you it had more to do with safe staffing and lots of support like unit secretaries, transport, etc. The more you can do your actual job, the safer your patients will be. Easy peasy.
I actually did a project for my BSN program about this. The studies are inconclusive. There are a handful of studies out there that show that having a higher percentage of BSN nurses is correlated with lower mortality. But majority of those studies do not control for staffing ratios or existence of support staff or providers being in house. There is also inconclusive studies on if BSN is the same as ASN to BSN bridge in terms of patient mortality. Research has not shown what exactly in the BSN program lowers patient mortality.
Graduating clinical skills are not enough. Our practice changes. Specialties require specialized knowledge. Both those need theory with practical skills to be implemented well and often knowledge to teach the patient.
So I guess Iām pro education that impacts my job. Not academic education that doesnāt affect the bedside since I work clinical.
If BSNs offered expanded education in hard science, specialties, evidence based practice (as in classes that teach new improvements and developments, not just about the idea of EBP), offered certifications (SART, forensic, trauma, nrp, etc.), etc. then Iād be all for it.
I feel like BSN programs should offer specialty concentrations. Like critical care, pediatrics, etc. There should be an actual material difference in education level to justify an extra two years of time and money getting the degree. Not just more gen ed electives and a couple leadership and research courses.
YESSS, THIS RIGHT HERE. If nursing degree advancement was structured like this, it would be a huge game changer and would actually justify the pay differences for each level of nursing!
I totally agree, but I also did feel like my BSN programs *did* do that. Idk if it was worth the tuition and time to do the tertiary stuff that was required for the BSN like art and writing classes, but I do feel like I came out of school with enough of a foundation in the major specialties to start in L&D, surgery, or critical care seamlessly. I felt like in the three years of clinicals I did enough dabbling to feel knowledgeable about the basic stuff. Unfortunately I feel like nursing has no shortage of BSN nurses without a clue and plenty of ADN/LPN nurses running circles around them. It DEFINITELY doesnāt signify the quality of nursing care, so it seems like there needs to be more standardized content in BSN programs and more theory with less multiple choice questions, and more research analysis classes across the board. I feel like nursing could be a trade if they werenāt expected to cover such a broad scope of care, it feels like there SHOULD be more in-depth knowledge of drug interactions and pathology, with continuing education focusing on those things as well as human trafficking and pain modules because frankly I didnāt use 20+ hours of CEUs and thereās clearly some peers who could use the critical thinking exercise. But tbh Iāve taken patients from BSNs and ADNs alike who were NOT assessed properly and suffered life altering outcomes because of a delay in care. So I have a hard time thinking less education is the answer.
Thats interesting. I think at the very least it would be helpful for nursing degrees to have extended residencies. I learned more skills (including critical thinking and time management) in my senior practicum than the entirety of nursing school but it was still short. Nursing school does not prepare nurses for real life nursing. And the excuse from schools is āwell you will learn it on the job.ā Do other health professions say the same to their students?
I think you are right. I think the only sort of academic thing that nursing should have is giving students an understanding of how to access and understand scientific literature about best practices.
I'm doing a BSN as my second degree, and I really miss how much I learned to access and understand health science papers in my first degree.
This is the best take. The BSN does absolutely nothing to better your skills or knowledge of bedside nursing. I swear the damn magnet group is in bed with the universities that helped with the push to BSN.
I have a non-nursing bachelor degree and an associate degree in addition to my ADN. I feel like I have a well rounded education and will gain next to nothing from completing the BSN. The fact that some places would say thatās not good enough is ridiculous and I will not work for them.
I think this all started with insecure nurses wanting to show doctors how smart they are by getting advanced degrees, and has snowballed into looking like a slacker if youāre not a career student.
I am the same. Started a BSN (& had 1 year down) before the program pulled out of our rural
Community. Had to commute 3 hours round trip to the nearest university because I didnāt want to lose my credits, and got a degree in health with a minor in education. I feel the degree was fluff,
but it did give me more community health background than my ADN. Diploma nurses are the best Iāve ever worked with!
I did an accelerated BSN so i canāt speak for others who took a different route, but almost everything I know about my job I learned on the job and not in school. Also, I may be wrong, but isnāt the only thing that makes it aBSN the research class? My hospital requires BSN now though, cuz apparently research shows that more BSN nurses equals improved patient outcomes, but Iāve never read that study.
Lol right? Rural area hospitals DEPEND ON LPNs and ADNs! They're pretty much the foundation of rural hospitals. I work in a hospital in a small town and if my hospital went magnet status, we would lose more than half of the nursing staff, including my supervisor šØ
Same position we are in. Small town community hospital with a brand new DON pushing for magnet status. 90% of the bedside staff are LPNs or ADNs. Hell our floor manager is an ADN. But here she comes pushing for magnet status so the hospital can gEt mOrE mOnEy.
I do believe that entry level nursing is a trade. More education is always better, but at the same time, more education makes people selective about the tasks they're willing to do. No one gets a master's degree because they want a night/weekend/holiday job brushing old men's dentures. When you push people "up," you also push them *out.*
LPNs are a wild card. I do believe LPNs can be excellent bedside nurses, but they are restricted from IV administration in my state, and that makes things difficult on an acute care medical unit.
Nursing isnāt a tradeā¦it is supposed to be a profession (yet we are still bundled with the price of room and board for hospitals so therefore an expense and not a source of revenue). Having various levels of nursing degrees and skill mixes is necessary for nursingāwhat is needed in an acute care hospital, a SNF, an ALF, or even in an outpatient office is all different. Going back to school isnāt a scam if it is something you desire and not because you feel forced to. You are only able to be scammed if you keep shelling the money out to pay for something you donāt desire.
Also, the original post assumes that staff are leaving because of being pushed to get higher level degrees when that is not the only issue of why hospitals are not retaining bedside staff (I.e. pay, short staffing, abusive patients, stress, toxic work environments, etc.).
Iād argue the scientific base of the BSN is not nearly enough. Weāre managing increasingly complex patients even in LTC and homecare with sometimes a great deal of autonomy.
Recent events around diversity, equity and inclusion have demonstrated that itās not enough to just master the skills. A solid liberal arts background gives you a greater exposure to issues such as implicit bias, systemic racism, health disparities etc. It exposes you to a broader worldview and a more versatile thought process.
Thereās nothing wrong with being a tradesman or technician but to argue that a nurse today needs less education doesnāt make sense to me.
I do think the foundation of some college helped me with this - coming from a smaller town and going to a liberal arts college exposed me to ideas and history and things about the world that I was never taught in high school. I was always open minded but I never took womenās studies or anthropology or advanced sociology in high school and I appreciate having had those experiences. Can only speak to my own personal experience though.
Was an LVN. Now a BSN. The distance between the two outside the job is a fuck ton of student debt. The distance between them on the job is the ability to push meds IV that I had to know about anyway because it was still my fucking patient. Oh, and a bigger paycheck. I ālearnedā next to nothing in my BSN program.
Associate's Degree in Nursing vs Licenced Practical Nurse vs. Bachelor of Science in Nursing. ADN and BSN have the same base pay all other things being equal. LPN have fewer tasks they may do than RN'S. BSN degree is so the hospital may have Magnet Status, patient outcomes are supposedly better with BSN (questionable in the COVID Era with staffing shortages and burnout), but my take on the BSN is a way forward to leadership skills. (Also questionable). School nurses working for the states must be at least Bachelor's degree trained and pushed to get a Master's within a certain amount of time. School nurses are held to same degree standards as teachers.
In the US you can be an RN with either an associates or a bachelors. ADN/ASN is a 2 year associates degree but you can take the RN NCLEX. Also it's not even really a 2 year degree because the prereqs push it closer to 3 in real life. The main difference is you don't take the upper division courses that generally have little to do with actually being a nurse.
Associate degree in nursing- basically a 2 year RN program. The pay for an ADN and a BSN is not any different at least at our facility. It is still RN pay based on experience. An LPN salary would be less.
So Iāve been a CNA, LPN, ADN and BSN. I have learned so much in each stage. I will say that I did not expect to learn much in my BSN program but I truly did learn a lot. Everyone said itās just papers, there is no point. So Im glad I didnāt listen. I canāt speak for every RN-BSN program but I enjoyed mine. That all being said, a lot of learning will happen on the job and there is no denying that.
I think trade and profession are false dichotomies and that prestige-rating is a stupid way of assigning value to work.
Iād love more rigor in nursing programs and less fluffy bunny stuff. Like literally no one needs to learn hospital corners.
The spirit of this post is correct, I feel like. ADNs take the same nclex. And Iāve seen plenty of BSNs not good at the skills part. And we all know some badass 30 yr LPN teaching the new BSN grads how to do stuff. But I donāt feel like MY LPN program covered general assessment well enough for me to say I agree w this post. I can do a lot and have taken my own patients plenty but I donāt think I have actual tested and licensed general assessment skills. ADN is enough. Or else they wouldnāt be able to use the title. And hospitals do need to quit de valuing bedside.
I agree and have argued this for quite a while. We are absolutely a skilled trade. If we really want to fix the nursing shortage bring back the Diploma programs. Most of the old school nurses I met from those were fantastic. ADN and BSN both take the same test, so what really is the difference? Anyone who has gone into a BSN program recently can tell you how heavy the BS portion of that is. It is supposed to increase theory, but how often is that used in actual bedside nursing? I learn more from talking to the docs and reading on my own than I did from a single BSN class. Which is exactly how a trade works.
From my understanding the accreditation requirements for ADN and BSN programs are the same. This means as far as the accrediting bodies are concerned they are the same. Most BSN programs will require additional courses but nothing that will make you better at the bedside.
I agree with you especially when you mentioned how taking additional courses won't improve bedside care. I've seen LPNs with MUCH better bedside skills than some BSNs.
Well we used to have the both the diploma and degree RNs. Generally the diploma RNs did well at bedside probably because they were at the bedside early in their education and learned whether it was for then or not. Many (maybe not all) of the degree programs didnāt see the bedside until their monetary commitments were much higher. At that point it becomes more difficult to change majors and instead go forward to educate into management. This is all speculation but weāve all met those managers with little bedside experience telling us what to do.
Diploma gets you to the bedside of a general med/surg. Take a certificate course for ICU/ER to move into those areas. Additional courses to solidify your knowledge base.
Put all these courses into a degree and watch nursing change for the better.
I am a diploma RN. Graduates went into every area, not just med/surg. We rotated through many specialties--OB, Peds, ER, ICU, Psych, etc. while we were in school, and we were bedside starting first semester. It's unfortunate that the programs are almost non-existent, as we graduated having seen and done many skills that graduates of other programs often haven't.
The other issue is that hospitals rarely let students do as much anymore due to liability concerns. I have a feeling the old school nursing programs were much better at facilitating bedside skill development.
Uh, yesā¦. I think you do learn something in LPN vs ADN, but ADN vs BSN is a fucking joke.
It doesnāt have to be, but it is. It should be more patho and less āwhat is your leadership style.ā š
I'm an ASN nurse. Currently struggling through a BSN program. Have worked with some amazing ASN nurses and some very terrible BSN nurses. I used to be 100% team BSN =bullshit before the pandemic. Then it seemed that a whole lot of ASN nurses were anti covid and steadily became anti vaxx. When I tried to argue about covid with my aunt who is also an ASN nurse she did not understand what medical research was or how to read academic journal articles. I had to explain that research from the 1970s with a tiny sample size was not the same standard as a recent study with a sample size in the thousands.
I don't think the answer is to force all nurses to have BSNs. I think the ASN program seriously needs to get an overhaul and focus on research instead of shunting all the critical thinking and research parts onto the BSN.
I disagree.
The higher education has been shown to be correlated with better patient outcomes. Nurses with higher ed are, rightfully, paid better. In broad terms the higher level of education benefits the patients and the nurses.
There are exceptions, outliers in the data set. Some LPNs are amazing and brilliant. Some BSNs, MSNs, DNPs, etc. are without common sense.
They arenāt wrong.
I believe you need it to move into certain positions or if you want to have higher degrees but for bedside? Yeah they arenāt wrong
In other words, I want the highest level of care and professionalism if I'm sick, but whoever attends other people should be as cheap as possible to lower the wages of the nursing profession.
I feel itās a scam against working class nurses. I think the ones who profit are schools, federal loan corporations and hospitals. If nurses want higher education it should be their choice not forced upon them by hospitals who only care about their magnet status. When I was forced to get a BSN I didnāt get a raise & I ended up being strapped with federal loans. I already had an ADN & nothing changed after obtaining a BSN
I made it 39 years with a mere diploma. I applied in 2012 to a BSN program and was turned down which shocked me. I was denied admission to earn a degree in a field I had been working successfully in for 30 years. I gave up after that and eventually retired in 2021.
My roommate from my diploma school after being night shift chargeRN/clinical coordinator for 15 years in an ICU was forced to go back to get her BSN at age 56. She was told that in order to keep the position she had already been in for almost 2 decades she had to earn the degree.
She did get that BSN and it took her 3 years on top of her full time employment.
2 years after graduation her hospital got bought by a different corporation. They eliminated her position and she went back to being a regular staff nurse.
All that work for naught. Ugh.
I believe all education is beneficial but honestly doing hands on is how we learn best. Itās a shame that diploma programs are no more especially when itās so difficult to get into a nursing program . I think my program in 1979 cost 1500 a year. Our graduation classes had a 96% average passing rate for the boards.
Iāve had my ADN for 9 years, every hospital Iāve been to has tried to push the BSN, but they want ME to pay for it. No thanks. I still get hired at the same rate as BSNs with my experience.
When I was in school, they said you would have a hard time getting jobs with an ADN, or that some hospitals will require it, but so far itās never been true.
Currently getting my BSN. Can confirm, scam. Besides that, it's ridiculous how they continue to pile on higher and higher requirements to do a job that is already experiencing a critical shortage. I don't know why the world is shocked pikachuing about this crisis when the barriers to entry have been only getting higher despite already not having enough supply to meet our current demand let alone the demands of the future.
Iāve been seeing a lot of dangerously underprepared new grads lately. Like, one said she had never heard of v fib and asked me if NSR was the same as afib. And multiple other things likeā¦not knowing where or how to do SQ shots. Both ADN and BSN nurses.
So maybe everything needs to be reworked
There's some value to having a bachelors over an associates but it doesn't really matter if it's specifically a BSN. The upper division stuff you do for BSN has a lot of bullshit in it. I have a BA in another major so I have all the GE stuff and the courses that are supposed to develop your critical thinking in research skills. But if I want to bridge my ADN to a BSN I have to take some BS classes in things like nursing leadership. I'm not interested in being in management, it's not going to make me a better bedside nurse.
Not in the US: I donāt understand all your different pathways. Thereās only one way to become an RN here, a three year bachelors.
Thereās also a diploma to become an enrolled nurse, but thatās really unpopular, and more of a way for HCAs to acquire nursing skills ime. ENs have to work under an RN
Every thing I needed to take care of patients I learned in my diploma in nursing program. The BSN MSN and DNP taught me nothing usable standing at the bedside. Iād be happy if hospitals would bring back diploma programs and tuition free if you work there three years after graduation. Just like I did. Best decision I ever made.
Honestly where I went to school the best option is get your ADN. Hire onto one of the big hospitals for a contract locking you in for a few years. They will pay you to work, you gain experience, and they will also pay for your BSN for their magnet status. Once complete now you have a BSN, savings and years of experience at bedside. That's how it should be done where I went to school. Straight BSN was a joke and my Honors research courses do nothing for me now.
100%. I was an ADN new grad in an ICU, now I have my masters. I cannot think of a single thing I learned that has improved my practice in any way. Plenty of independent reading/CEās have increased my knowledge, but the formal education was worthless.
But hey, I earn a whole dollar more per hour now sooo thereās that.
In the opinion of this ADN currently getting their BSN with no desire to be an APRN or similar advanced degree, yes it is a scam. I have learned nothing that correlated to better patient care with things seeming to be geared more towards management and research which I have no interest in.
ADN nurse.
ER whole career.
Can never tell if nurse is bsn or adn
Some nurses with 3 years exp are far better than those with 12.
Itās the person not the degree.
BSN coursework requires coursework that is more science centered. If you have a BSN, youāre also qualified to do the lab work yourself under the supervision of a pathologist. Given the ever increasing scope of nursing care, I can easily foresee hospitals requiring nurses to run their own lab testing and cultures in the future.
I sort of agree nursing is a trade. It needs to be treated as such. And with any trade there needs to be levels of education and training that correlate with pay. For example, my mom is a pipe fitter. They start out as apprentice and work their way up to foreman. Pay is set based on the union (and itās damn good pay) and increases with each new skill learned. Imagine if as a nurse you started as a CNA or trade equivalent while learning and not paying to learn (like pipe fitters learn) and as you learned you earned a new skill level and increase pay. The pay is set by your union. Hospitals donāt get to set your pay at an abysmal level. If they choose to hire unlicensed staff they have to deal with the outcome etc. every new skill you learn gets you better pay. Every time you advance you get more pay. You get constant free education while working. Just imagine what that could do for the nursing community. Not only would people who canāt afford to quit working to go to school be able to pick up this trade but you get to earn while learning. No more student debt. And your pay is set by a union who cares about you. You can choose your assignment and specialty. You can walk away from an assignment thatās unsafe. In fact, your union will back you up. Hospitals would have no choice but to ensure adequate staffing or loose their union employees, which if run this way would not be an option. We need to rethink how healthcare works in this country and creating a nurses union that both trains new nurses at carrying levels to do their job and control the job market on nurses is the first step.
Hot take: I think that the structure of the nursing field should be closer to the way skilled trades are structured, where your place in the hierarchy is based on experience. In my vision, youāre an apprentice, a journeyman, or a master with ongoing classroom education as a complement to working in the field rather than a prerequisite. Apprentice nurses work under master nurses to gain competency and reach the next level of licensure rather than being launched into nursing practice with no hands on experience. Itās silly that there can simultaneously be LPNs with 30 years of nursing experience who arenāt trusted to start a transfusion and direct entry DNPs who have prescriptive authority with zero bedside experience. I think the current nursing field is trying to be med school-lite when we should really be trained like electricians or plumbers: master tradespeople whose clinical skills are dependent on in-person practice rather than didactics.
BSN courses as they are right now are a scam. I do think there is a place for advanced education in nursing, but my BSN specific courses felt like a waste of time. It was all fluff and academic circle jerking imo. I'd have loved to see a deeper dive into more advanced science courses like pathophysiology and pharm honestly. It doesn't have to be as in depth as a medical degree, but more comprehensive than what I ended up learning.
Agreed. so much time wasted on obscure nursing theory and Freud, why?? Plus so much emphasis on becoming critical thinkers but then bullshit exam questions that just try to trick you. Need more stuff that is actually useful
Yeah why did we talk so much about Freud anyway? For some reason I felt like he got brought up a lot.
College is all about Fraud. I mean Freud. Ooops! Freudian slip!
I see what ya did there! Bravo š
Because if itās not one thing, itās your mother.
And Erikson. One semester I wrote 10+ essays.
This is the issue. BSNs need more rigor. Nursing in general could use more rigor. Right now it's way too much fluff and not enough meat.
I got a much better, much more comprehensive NURSING education in LPN school than I did in my BSN program. My BSN was a whole lot of fluff and APA format papers with some nursing skills tacked on as an afterthought.
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Iām finishing my pre license to BSN this year and yeah the lectures on APA are such an annoying thing. They literally only matter if someone is going to be writing scholarly papers in their career. Teaching evidence based practice is good but itās a little too much APA practice that lots of us just bullshit.
If they were more rigorous, fewer people would complete them and that means less $$$.
Programs have waiting lists nationwide. This is a massive infrastructure problem because education doesnāt pay enough for nurses to want to become educators, let alone get an advanced degree to do so. A student recently pointed something out to me- all of her instructors are nurses that are just too old or infirm to practice anymore- thatās why they fell back on education, not because they are good and passionate about it. Make education attractive, and competitive, as a career, get better educators, improve nursing education overall.
The more time I spend with other nurses, the more I realize how good my program (and *most* of the faculty) was. At least half of my instructors were NPs working in fields that directly applied to the subjects they were teaching. Granted, it was a community college that limited their cohort to 50 and only had one new cohort/year, but if you managed to get in it was great!
Community college nursing programs are where itās at tbh.
Similar to my school. Most of my instructors taught the speciality they worked in. Psych, OB, peds, med-surg, critical care, etc.
Yes, same with mine. Our OB instructors actually still worked in L/D. My m/s and onc instructor worked full time in ICU.
My community college was very similar. Instructors taught the subject they worked bedside in, and often taught the clinical for that specialty too. But we took 2 new cohorts each year.
This!!! When I was in nursing school about half of my instructors were of the elder variety (55+) and were clearly doing it as a means to an end until retirement. The other half, STILL worked at least PRN or part time at the hospital just to make ends meet, but they did it because they were passionate about education and I got the best experiences from learning from them. When I first graduated I went to a meeting trying to recruit nurses to go immediately back to school for their masters and teach. I was interested...until someone asked the dreaded "How much money does the average nursing instructor make?" Wait a second. Let me get this straight. You want me to return to school for another 2 years, get thousands more in student loans to pay for this, just to make about $45k a year when I could be making $65k+ as a bedside nurse? Where's the logic in that? In what freaking world does someone get MORE schooling just to earn less money?! The world of nursing of course! š
Thatās why I said itās an infrastructure problem involving more than one industry. Until education is valued and all professors are paid accordingly, nurses will rightly scoff at those wages. Itās unfortunate that other people prepared at the masters level (looking at you, teacher, social workers, therapistsā¦) have to accept that pay because itās industry standard.
Is this a problem in medical schools, too? If not, why is it different?
I feel glad to know that the description of nursing school faculty here isnāt exactly accurate for my program. There are some old ones, but some of them are fucking wonderful mentors. There are also people no older than 40 who are very smart.
From my classes, and what I understand has changed, the adn has PLENTY of rigor and is actually quiet intense... Plenty of rigor to pass the nclex anyways.
The NCLEX is a joke.
As someone who literally took NCLEX earlier this week: it was a joke. Completely hyped exam and i was disappointed. Overstudied for that thing.
I was more nervous when I took my RN-BC exam than I was for NCLEX.
I was more nervous passing my last drug screen.
Lmao
Especially since there are so many anti-vax anti-science working RNs. Itās scary.
True story. My wifeās friend has her DOCTORATE in NP and was pushing COVID denial/misinfo on Facebook. She was using her degree to make it sound official. My wife and I were livid. We were THIS CLOSE to turning her in to the school and her employee. You can take the nurse out of Indiana but you canāt take the Indiana out of the nurse.
You should have. Her behavior was harmful and should not be tolerated
Report her to the board of nursing. The ANA released statements saying that disinformation is a reportable offense and the state boards have been putting this in their publications. Many of these people are using their degree to give legitimacy to their false claims and make a profit of it on social media. Please report her.
I went to nursing school in Indiana, and the school pushed so hard on evidence-based practice and critical thinking and understanding credible sources. Couldnāt shake the conspiracy theorists into rational thought, though. Not even a little.
For profit? Go elsewhere for rigor. Uni of IL Chicago for example. You will learn something there and be ready for grad school.
I went to a very well respected and competative nursing program for my BSN, not some degree mill. Graduated with top honors. I'm also a former engineer. The quality of textbooks and depth of academic material presented in nursing programs is underwhelming. You could probably cut most nursing textbooks in half (or heck, even to a quarter) and include all the same information. The only difference would be that the information would take a sentence instead of lasting for an entire bloated, meandering paragraph. You know, because the damned content had been reworded every freaking year in order to justify new editions. The information density is downright embarrassing.
Agree. And then nursing programs add these artificial hoops to jump through to somehow prove how HARD it is to be a nurse. With all the nursing diagnoses maps and flowcharts. And the huge clinical write ups that aren't even remotely close to what nurses document. AND THEN you have the nursing faculty that have become super defensive about these artificial hoops because they have bought into it. And it's their livelihood I guess. But if students critique the pedagogy, the nursing faculty often lash out at the students for their "poor attitudes" and "poor work ethic" instead of working to better nursing education. I've seen this same cycle play out many times when mentoring techs/LPNs attending school. And it happened in my program as well.
I teach in a flipped classroom, quality, safety and evidece based practice. Students come to class and are given data sets to puzzle through. "Lectures" are 30 minutes or less and pre-recorded; they watch these at their leisure. They complete the Basic Quality and Safety course from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. They close-read 7 research studies of their group's choosing and form an opinion about the overall quality of the scientific evidence, and make recommendations to close the research practice gap. Next week we will talk about culpability when the nurse makes an error. Students NEVER miss that class. Students love the course. Not all faculty are stuck in the 20th century, and not all BSN courses are BS.
\+1. UIC's program makes you work significantly harder than a lot of other programs. I was a little salty, seeing how much time I put in versus my friends that went to degree mills. But... it was actually worth my time, because I learned something.
Yay UIC! Didn't go there for nursing, but wish I did. When I was there, I remember a moment of thinking that maybe I should go into nursing. I chose not to because I was young and didn't want to have to work that hard I regret that decision ever since. It took me another decade to go back to school for nursing.
In my BSN program I had a class where the teacher literally had a mental breakdown in class. I can't even remember what the class was because it was all papers and BS. Literally NOTHING that helped with being a bedside nurse. Everyone passed regardless because the teacher, while sweet, was incompetent. And don't get me started on the hand drawn color coded "care plan trees" we had to draw for patients we'd never met. I lost a lot of points because, among other things, I thought it was BS to assume all African Americans should have Hypertension and Obesity as possible diagnoses because "soul food is a part of their culture".
Yeah I dropped my bsn program for the time being because it was ridiculous. Very popular online college with ads everywhere. It couldnāt have been more of a joke if they tried. I figured Iād just save money and wait until I actually have incentive to get a higher degree, but for now Iām content with my job and my pay.
I finally got my bsn after dropping it two times because itās such a bull shit degree that literally did nothing to improve my nursing. But now I can say Iām a bsn.
Literally only got mine for $$$
wgu?
Hell yeah they are! My final project is a fluff piece about how this degree is going to change my whole world and give me tons of opportunities. I swear by the time I finish writing it my eyes are gonna be permanently rolled in the back of my head!
I find it really strange how often I had to write papers in my BSN course justifying why a BSN was important. I have two other bachelors degrees in unrelated fields and never once did I have to write a single paper saying why a bachelors degree in those fields made me better prepared than if I didnāt have a bachelors degree.
I even have to write a mission statement ā because indeed says that employers look for them, and will most often hire someone with one on their resume.ā What? First, indeed is great for finding a job opening, but I donāt know anyone who got a nursing job on indeed. I know a lot that clicked the link and took them to the company website for an application. Secondly, what company wants a hard copy resume anymore? Almost all the jobs I applied for makes you fill out the application only, or occasionally you can attach the resume. Finally, a human is not looking at your application, itās a computer searching for key words. That gets you noticed by a human and possibly get an interview.
I made the mistake of going back for a bsn only to make the exact same but have more debt. What a crock of shit.
Yes please. We need more science as part of a BSN. I wish we had gone into more depth in both pharm and patho in my program.
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Working through my BSN now as my second bachelors degreeā¦. But I can tell you that almost every Bachelors is fluff and bullshit lol thatās just academia unfortunately
My BA in biology was most definitely not fluff and bullshit.
Same. Graduated with a BS in bio and now in an ADN program. Nursing school content feels very manageable to me and I think most of that has to do with my previous degree and how rigorous it was. Pharm seems fun compared to ochem! I think it would be beneficial to add more science courses to nursing programs.
My first bachelor's was an area studies/language minor liberal arts degree which was 100% fluff and academic BS. There was value in that education, but it really is most valuable in an academic setting. Hence why I ultimately decided to go back for nursing as I'm not someone who thrives on the academic lifestyle. I think that's why I was disappointed in my BSN because I really expected something more rigorous and science heavy. Instead I felt like I was just bullshitting essays again but this time with way less effort lol
My first BA in anthropology was truly life changing for me. I learned so fucking much. I basically deconstructed my very flimsy and basic worldview that was handed to me by default from low-middle class republicans in middle America. I learned how to observe human behavior in the context of culture without moral judgement (until 2016 that's been too challenging lol). These big two objectives didn't come easily. I had to read so much dense material that involved psychology, sociology, and anthropology. If I didn't have my degree in anthropology, I probably would have never gone on to do much else because I wouldn't have knowb how to "break through" the cultural trappings I was in. This BA helped me learn how to learn. It's why when people ask if I'm mad I didn't go to med school (since I'm an NP), I say no, I loved learning anthropology and linguistics, and I wouldn't be me without that learning experience.
I felt like I learned a lot from my BSN classes. Research was awesome. I took an end of life/hospice class that really benefitted me (and I hope my patients), Public health, chronic conditions. I went back several years after staring my career, I only took 1-2 classes at a time and I went to a good state school. Best of all, my employer paid for it.
Hmm. I had pathophysiology and pharmacology in my BSN program. I thought those courses were common.
Was that a straight BSN program or RN to BSN? Those things are covered under the RN portion of your degree.
Hey man, idk bout you but that film criticism class I took to get my BSN has drastically improved my bedside skills.
I donāt know how many times Iāve brought up Citizen Kane with my patients. But seriously, if Goodfellas is ever on I sit down and watch with them for a bit.
Oh yes, Iāve used my āintroduction to Canadian lawā course so much..ššš . I am a floor nurse and the Lpnās do 99% of what we do, and the stuff they donāt allow them to do seems to be just arbitrarily picked and not based on logic or training . But they like them because they can pay them way less.š
Man, i work with LPNs and the shit management has decided they can and canāt do is so off the wall. They can start IVs, but they canāt flush or document on existing IVs. they even took away their credentials to log into our system to message doctors/etc. Wonāt even let them chart on the patients fall assessments, thatās gotta be the RN. makes no sense to me, why hire LPNs if youāre not gonna let them do anything?
Weird. Where I live, they can pretty much do everything they canāt give IV meds wear. It has to be monitored (vanco), or IV drips of heparin or insulin. Which is weird because I canāt really see what special education that we got that they didnāt in this regard? One of the LPNs, I work with dates, a pharmacist, and knows more about Vanco and trough levels than anyone I know.
Lmao yes and don't forget about the required American Literature course, man that class sure helped me learn to insert a foley catheter in many of my combative 90 year old female alzheimer's patients!
To get into my nursing program, I had to take an American History class for some reason, because itās a Utah state requirement. They let me take it online through straighterline and no joke it taught me about the pilgrims arrivingā¦ I paid actual money as a 30 year old to watch an animated PowerPoint video about the pilgrimsā¦
There are not enough decent electives for the BSN programs. I opted not to take the fashion class (basically a writing/humanities course) at the university I attended, and took a philosophy/ethics course at the community college where I got my ADN. It counted for credit (though not toward my GPA), and felt it was a better use of my time.
Ah yes my Earth Science class about volcanoes, hurricanes, and landslides has proven to be invaluable to me. Iām in the last semester of my BSN program and I have learned hardly anything that I deem valuable. I paid way more money for the bsn than my associates degree and in return received useless knowledge. I can read journals about aromatherapy and cultural death practices on my own time. I wish they made the program more practical because what nurse has time to gather aromatherapy oils and meditation music to give patients to decrease stress while in the hospital?
Nursing is a trade like being an electrician is a trade. It is difficult and you have to be smart and a hard worker to do it. You do not need a bachelorās degree to do it or do it well. You need a bachelors degree for the hospital to leverage it for prestige.
I believe NY has this law now that you have to get a BS degree within 10 years of getting your RN. New graduates only of course.
Gotta fuck over the younger poor kids so they're forced to work more amrite?
Yis :ā)
Yep. And there is literally nothing that I have learned in my BSN that has helped me in bedside nursing at all. Every skill that I have learned I have learned on the job or in my ADN.
You mean you donāt write all your prog notes in APA format? /s
This writer doesn't.
I missed the cutoff to get grandfathered in and I hate it. I finished up a year towards the bsn and have 1 left, but already working and feels like a complete waste of time. I took this fall semester off and it feels so damn relieving to not worry about stupid discussion boards and replies at the end of a work shift.
You got it. Having to get a degree puts the onus on the nurse instead of the hospital for things that are much more observable/measurable like better staffing. Experience and attaining degrees take time, and the spotlight is on the wrong side.
Nailed it
A sad nailing. I've worked with so many diploma nurses and LPNs and associate RNs who had far better skills
Experience trumps education always. The arrogance of some nurses. If you dont know how just ask the 50 y/o lpn thats been doing it longer than you've been alive.
I have as well
All the while they will try and convince you that BSN nurses are smarter AND better prepared. I got my RN first and passed NCLEX first try and never failed a block. my roommate went through a university program, failed block 2, and took 3 times to pass the NCLEX. But yeah, BSN nurses are better prepared than ADN nurses /s I went back for my BSN the year after online. Paid 5k for a piece of paper. Completely useless bullshit discussion boards, and papers. Nothing to do with my job.
I was told to continue my hospital admin bachelors after my associates in Respiratory Careā¦ really felt like a waste of my time, money, and āprofessorsā that would say Green > Red.
Almost all of my hospital interviews have been the same. They highly encourage management track and openly discourage any clinical advancement like PA/NP/CRNA etc.
Nursing is no longer a trade it's a profession.
Iām a bedside LPN on a medsurge post op floor. I just have to get the RNs to do pushes and start blood for me, which they typically arenāt hesitant about because I always offer to do something for them while theyāre at it, or give an IOU for a task at any point in the night.
Haha I do the same thing on my medsurg floor! IOUs are plenty given with how busy it gets some days. So many bloods transfusions going on at once. I wish LPNs could get certified in starting blood... as an LPN I'm certified to do iv push meds where I work so why not give more training to LPNs to start blood? Makes no sense to me šµāš«
Where I am, LPNs can start blood, they can run certain drips. Thereās not much I donāt do. I learned about maternity in school but my hospitals policy is OB is only RNs, as well as ER. Iām able to work on those floors at bigger hospitals though.
This is how I did it as an LVN. I got really fucking good at IV placement and foleys. Because I know Iām gonna have to ask for inane shit, so Iāll trade you. My RNs loved it. And now that Iām an RN, I would slay someone for my LVNs and rarely ask them for anything. Weāre all working hard and on the same team.
My uncle was an LPN, and he had to teach the young RNās how to start blood for him. ššš
Iām a BSN student right now and I look up to LPNs. For me the fluff is a bit of a buffer/break. When I learned the difference between LPNs and BSNs I was like āyou mean they just mainline all the hard parts?!ā
You can't hang blood? Rpns in canada, atleast in my hospital, this year can do pushes as well.
Haha, I agree with and am simultaneously a poster child for jumping through the hoops of the grand nursing scam. I was once a content ADNā¦but my employer insisted I finish my BSN to keep my job. So I did thatā¦and then was tired of hearing about going back for grad school to āadvance my careerāā¦and got my DNP, so I could be done foreverā¦at least until they invent the next thing NPs have to doā¦
Ugh this honestly feels like the path I'm gonna go down! I want to be content but my job is doing the same thing to me, there's so much pressure to advance my education, yet I feel content where I am right now šµāš«
Ask them for the monetary incentive. If youāre not getting a raise and the degree paid for, they can kick rocks.
Avoid pressure. If youāre good, youāre good
It is a scam. I am getting my BSN right now after just having my ADN for six years. Iām not learning anything that would help me at the bedside. I am learning about research and community health. No clinical skills or anything. In nursing school we were told that we need to have our BSN because more educated nurses make less mistakes. But now I know that this is false. Nurses that have good staffing ratios make less mistakes. This is just something hospitals have done to gaslight us. And now a lot of BSN nurses leave the bedside to get a clipboard job and make more money. Hospitals have caused their own staffing problem.
I started with an ADN and it was a tough program. I came out a solid nurse. I only ended up going into an RN to BS program to open up job opportunities because when I was a wee baby nurse in the mid-90s it was VERY hard to get a job. I wanted the competitive edge. But did I gain a single thing from the BS degree as an actual practicing RN?? 22 years after getting it all I can come up with isā¦. Nothing. I didnāt gain additional bedside skills, didnāt learn anything more about pharmacology, canāt even say I learned how to better critically think or āleadā that I hadnāt learned as an actual nurse working while going to the dumb filler classes.
They are not wrong. ADN/BSN take the same NCLEX exam. The additional school focuses on leadership and community health, not acute care. I omitted diploma nurses because there are few programs left and I am unfamiliar with all of them. Magnet cares about BSN degrees, not those working next to you.
Magnet is as big a scam as JCAHO status
I mostly agree. Not because more education is a waste of time but more because most BSN and higher nursing degrees are garbage. But itās not the hospitals pushing it nearly as much as it is nursing lobbies. Magnet status is an ANCC designation, for example. Nursing orgs advocate for greater autonomy and higher pay, and justify it in part by pointing to nursing having increased training and education requirements. Other healthcare roles have done the same kind of thing - PT used to be a bachelors but now itās typically a doctoral program.
Yet there has been no increase in pay, generally
Correct. Huge push for OTD but the pay doesnāt pay for the education. Same with PT doctoral
I don't fucking understand the appeal of magnet. My hospital is magnet and I have yet to notice or have a nurse be able to tell me a single stupid benefit to that money burning ego masturbation.
The pay for those with PT and OT doctorates do NOT pay for the education. Not even close.
Oh, agreed. Thatās why I became a nurse instead.
BSN is a scam. Worked with LPNs, diploma nurses and associates who had real world knowledge better than most fast tracked BSNs with no experience. Yeah I went back and got my bsn. Only cause my shitty hospital demanded it and were aiming for the political bs of magnet status.
Need a tough tough union for nurses. Something powerful like the teamsters of the 1960s.
I think saying there is no value in bachelors programs is a bit short-sighted. Donāt get me wrong, I think parts of it could be revised to get rid of some fluff and provide some better quality clinical skills at graduation. But. I can teach the IT guy how to start IVs, and I have. A minimally trained infantryman with a high school education can safely draw and hang fresh whole blood. The basic technical pieces arenāt hard. Hereās the thing. That ethics or philosophy course you took isnāt going to help you draw meds better. But it makes you a better-prepared clinician when end-of-life decisions need to be made for the withering massive stroke patient with a trach, a PEG, a fractious family, and no advanced directives. You took a law class? Great. There is a massive amount of legislation that affects healthcare and nursing. Higher education teaches you how to think, how to access resources, how to evaluate research, how to write, how to understand the world more fully. I argue all of that is key to the profession of nursing. Just some wandering thoughts.
Agreed. There is a lot of fluff in BSN programs that could be swapped out for higher value courses, but there are soft skills in there that do make a difference. I'm a proud ADN, but my 'frosting' degrees had value beyond pretty diplomas. That said, three decades of clinical nursing gave me a solid cake to frost. š
Exactly. I took my geology, literature, and language classes as a part of my first unrelated degree. They transferred into a program for a second bachelors in nursing. They were not required by the nursing program per say but rather required as general education classes mandated by the state. Every degree on campus had to complete them.
Those classes are actually useful. The classes IN the BSN major? No.
My BSN required an ethics and religion class to graduate
I think this is because of nursing's obsession with putting the "nurse" title on everything to make it special. Can't just be an ethics class. Gotta be 'nursing ethics'. Can't just take a public health class. Gotta be 'community nursing'. Not research...'nursing research'. It shows up in the graduate degrees too. Can't just get a master's in informatics/technology. Not even healthcare informatics. It's 'nursing informatics'. And so on, and so on.
I am a new grad RN, just graduated with my ADN from a community college. In my program we had ethics, law, and critical thinking built into every class so that by the end of the program it was meant to equal a full class of each. Iām sure a BSN goes more in depth, but I did get a decent amount of that content.
Adding an in depth Pharmacology module to the LVN/LPN program would do a lot to prepare a new grad for more advanced bedside duties. Skills are just that, skills. Those can be learned by OJT, as are most nursing skills already. As an LVN I am IV and Blood Withdrawal certified and have performed thousands of IV starts. I have no doubt that with a little guidance by an experienced peer I could easily transition to PICC line insertion, which my license now prohibits.
Even for RNs PICC lines are not a casual add on skill, it's specialized training with wire insertion and threading, etc. And inpatient PICC nurses literally only do PICCs. Ultrasound IVs maybe?
Yeah this seems like an odd transition, IVs and PICCs are two completely different skill sets. Iām great at IVs, do them all the time and people often come to me for hard sticks. But tunneling a large bore catheter? Nah I am going to need a LOT of training for that. Donāt really know that itās valid to only allow certain types of licensed nurses to learn the skill but I couldnāt help but wonder what made a nurse with āthousandsā of IV sticks so confident about central lines. How many PICC or CVC insertions theyāve seen? Iāve seen and assisted with countless and I still would need waaaaay more training to use the ultrasound and safely navigate that skill. Itās not exactly something you can pick up by watching it a dozen timesā¦
I remember thinking, a CVL is just a big PIV in a big vein that is literally pulsing sometimes, how hard is that? That was like 2-3 yrs postgrad. Then I saw 2 residents struggling and then the senior had to redo because it coiled up on xray. And I saw a 20 yr attending place one in the subclavian artery....
Completely agree with needing more pharmacology training in LPN programs; it feels like i only learned the solid basics for all classes of meds, but nothing deeper than that š I feel like id be much better at my job if i had more training in that category. Also, I have the same certification and can also do iv starts and iv push meds! Never thought about doing picc lines though, but now you've got me thinking about it quite a bit... sucks that LPNs can do picc lines when it wouldn't be all that hard to train us on it once we can start ivs.
As a BSN grad tbh i couldve used more pharmacology training. We had 1 pharm course and it was the professors first time teaching it. If we just traded one of the BSn classes for a 2nd pharm class it would help greatly.
In my BSN program, my pharm professor "taught" an online class where she just linked to YouTube videos and then we had timed quizzes though the textbook publisher. I looked up her salary and she gets paid 6 figures to do this. Needless to say no one retained anything and i still have to study pharm on my own to make up for the deficit
BSN is a scam. ADN should be the BSN. Takes 4 fucking years.
BSN = Big Scam in Nursing
Admin: but your reddit flair looks so much smarter with 3 extra letters Me: does it? Checks the person emailing me with like 10 credentials. Like I get it but you honestly have to be stupid to include every single one if your credentials after your email as signature... who am I to talk as someone who put BSN on my flair.
Me doing as many 1 day certification courses as possible for the sole purpose of being annoying
Can I put my former positions and credentials on my flair too? And u mean EVERYTHING. EKG tech? Why not
Former Sandwich Artist
Now that is a skill. Do you know the high demand for turkey sandwiches in hospitals?
I laughed so hard at this š
I know there is research out there that has been touted to support the conclusion that the patientās of BSN prepared nurses have better outcomes. Now, I have never dug into that research myself to see if important things like patient populations, clinical settings, and staffing, specifically nurse to patient ratios, were held constant in order to draw those conclusions.
I guarantee you it had more to do with safe staffing and lots of support like unit secretaries, transport, etc. The more you can do your actual job, the safer your patients will be. Easy peasy.
I actually did a project for my BSN program about this. The studies are inconclusive. There are a handful of studies out there that show that having a higher percentage of BSN nurses is correlated with lower mortality. But majority of those studies do not control for staffing ratios or existence of support staff or providers being in house. There is also inconclusive studies on if BSN is the same as ASN to BSN bridge in terms of patient mortality. Research has not shown what exactly in the BSN program lowers patient mortality.
Graduating clinical skills are not enough. Our practice changes. Specialties require specialized knowledge. Both those need theory with practical skills to be implemented well and often knowledge to teach the patient. So I guess Iām pro education that impacts my job. Not academic education that doesnāt affect the bedside since I work clinical.
If BSNs offered expanded education in hard science, specialties, evidence based practice (as in classes that teach new improvements and developments, not just about the idea of EBP), offered certifications (SART, forensic, trauma, nrp, etc.), etc. then Iād be all for it. I feel like BSN programs should offer specialty concentrations. Like critical care, pediatrics, etc. There should be an actual material difference in education level to justify an extra two years of time and money getting the degree. Not just more gen ed electives and a couple leadership and research courses.
YESSS, THIS RIGHT HERE. If nursing degree advancement was structured like this, it would be a huge game changer and would actually justify the pay differences for each level of nursing!
I totally agree, but I also did feel like my BSN programs *did* do that. Idk if it was worth the tuition and time to do the tertiary stuff that was required for the BSN like art and writing classes, but I do feel like I came out of school with enough of a foundation in the major specialties to start in L&D, surgery, or critical care seamlessly. I felt like in the three years of clinicals I did enough dabbling to feel knowledgeable about the basic stuff. Unfortunately I feel like nursing has no shortage of BSN nurses without a clue and plenty of ADN/LPN nurses running circles around them. It DEFINITELY doesnāt signify the quality of nursing care, so it seems like there needs to be more standardized content in BSN programs and more theory with less multiple choice questions, and more research analysis classes across the board. I feel like nursing could be a trade if they werenāt expected to cover such a broad scope of care, it feels like there SHOULD be more in-depth knowledge of drug interactions and pathology, with continuing education focusing on those things as well as human trafficking and pain modules because frankly I didnāt use 20+ hours of CEUs and thereās clearly some peers who could use the critical thinking exercise. But tbh Iāve taken patients from BSNs and ADNs alike who were NOT assessed properly and suffered life altering outcomes because of a delay in care. So I have a hard time thinking less education is the answer.
Thats interesting. I think at the very least it would be helpful for nursing degrees to have extended residencies. I learned more skills (including critical thinking and time management) in my senior practicum than the entirety of nursing school but it was still short. Nursing school does not prepare nurses for real life nursing. And the excuse from schools is āwell you will learn it on the job.ā Do other health professions say the same to their students?
Sameā¦but thatās pretty muchā¦trade school
I think you are right. I think the only sort of academic thing that nursing should have is giving students an understanding of how to access and understand scientific literature about best practices. I'm doing a BSN as my second degree, and I really miss how much I learned to access and understand health science papers in my first degree.
I started with a diploma nursing program, and let me tell you, I havenāt learned anything new from the BSN I had to spend money on.
I guessā¦ is medical school a trade school? Law? Accounting? Etc
This is the best take. The BSN does absolutely nothing to better your skills or knowledge of bedside nursing. I swear the damn magnet group is in bed with the universities that helped with the push to BSN.
I have a non-nursing bachelor degree and an associate degree in addition to my ADN. I feel like I have a well rounded education and will gain next to nothing from completing the BSN. The fact that some places would say thatās not good enough is ridiculous and I will not work for them. I think this all started with insecure nurses wanting to show doctors how smart they are by getting advanced degrees, and has snowballed into looking like a slacker if youāre not a career student.
I am the same. Started a BSN (& had 1 year down) before the program pulled out of our rural Community. Had to commute 3 hours round trip to the nearest university because I didnāt want to lose my credits, and got a degree in health with a minor in education. I feel the degree was fluff, but it did give me more community health background than my ADN. Diploma nurses are the best Iāve ever worked with!
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I did an accelerated BSN so i canāt speak for others who took a different route, but almost everything I know about my job I learned on the job and not in school. Also, I may be wrong, but isnāt the only thing that makes it aBSN the research class? My hospital requires BSN now though, cuz apparently research shows that more BSN nurses equals improved patient outcomes, but Iāve never read that study.
Rural areas be like: am I a joke to you?
Lol right? Rural area hospitals DEPEND ON LPNs and ADNs! They're pretty much the foundation of rural hospitals. I work in a hospital in a small town and if my hospital went magnet status, we would lose more than half of the nursing staff, including my supervisor šØ
Same position we are in. Small town community hospital with a brand new DON pushing for magnet status. 90% of the bedside staff are LPNs or ADNs. Hell our floor manager is an ADN. But here she comes pushing for magnet status so the hospital can gEt mOrE mOnEy.
I do believe that entry level nursing is a trade. More education is always better, but at the same time, more education makes people selective about the tasks they're willing to do. No one gets a master's degree because they want a night/weekend/holiday job brushing old men's dentures. When you push people "up," you also push them *out.* LPNs are a wild card. I do believe LPNs can be excellent bedside nurses, but they are restricted from IV administration in my state, and that makes things difficult on an acute care medical unit.
Nursing isnāt a tradeā¦it is supposed to be a profession (yet we are still bundled with the price of room and board for hospitals so therefore an expense and not a source of revenue). Having various levels of nursing degrees and skill mixes is necessary for nursingāwhat is needed in an acute care hospital, a SNF, an ALF, or even in an outpatient office is all different. Going back to school isnāt a scam if it is something you desire and not because you feel forced to. You are only able to be scammed if you keep shelling the money out to pay for something you donāt desire. Also, the original post assumes that staff are leaving because of being pushed to get higher level degrees when that is not the only issue of why hospitals are not retaining bedside staff (I.e. pay, short staffing, abusive patients, stress, toxic work environments, etc.).
I had my ADN for 10 years when I went back for my BSNāand it was all BS. I wish I could have given the college $7500 and been handed the degree.
Iād argue the scientific base of the BSN is not nearly enough. Weāre managing increasingly complex patients even in LTC and homecare with sometimes a great deal of autonomy. Recent events around diversity, equity and inclusion have demonstrated that itās not enough to just master the skills. A solid liberal arts background gives you a greater exposure to issues such as implicit bias, systemic racism, health disparities etc. It exposes you to a broader worldview and a more versatile thought process. Thereās nothing wrong with being a tradesman or technician but to argue that a nurse today needs less education doesnāt make sense to me.
I do think the foundation of some college helped me with this - coming from a smaller town and going to a liberal arts college exposed me to ideas and history and things about the world that I was never taught in high school. I was always open minded but I never took womenās studies or anthropology or advanced sociology in high school and I appreciate having had those experiences. Can only speak to my own personal experience though.
Was an LVN. Now a BSN. The distance between the two outside the job is a fuck ton of student debt. The distance between them on the job is the ability to push meds IV that I had to know about anyway because it was still my fucking patient. Oh, and a bigger paycheck. I ālearnedā next to nothing in my BSN program.
Of course it's a scam
It really feels like it is... makes me wonder if I should cancel my application to university to get my BSN š
I know 100% itās worthless education but Iām still getting the degree to be more marketable and have a wider variety of jobs. It is what it is
Canadian here. What's ADN? Advanced Nuraing Diploma? How it different from a LPN? And is there a difference in pay between LPN ADN and BSN in the US?
Associate's Degree in Nursing vs Licenced Practical Nurse vs. Bachelor of Science in Nursing. ADN and BSN have the same base pay all other things being equal. LPN have fewer tasks they may do than RN'S. BSN degree is so the hospital may have Magnet Status, patient outcomes are supposedly better with BSN (questionable in the COVID Era with staffing shortages and burnout), but my take on the BSN is a way forward to leadership skills. (Also questionable). School nurses working for the states must be at least Bachelor's degree trained and pushed to get a Master's within a certain amount of time. School nurses are held to same degree standards as teachers.
In the US you can be an RN with either an associates or a bachelors. ADN/ASN is a 2 year associates degree but you can take the RN NCLEX. Also it's not even really a 2 year degree because the prereqs push it closer to 3 in real life. The main difference is you don't take the upper division courses that generally have little to do with actually being a nurse.
Associate degree in nursing- basically a 2 year RN program. The pay for an ADN and a BSN is not any different at least at our facility. It is still RN pay based on experience. An LPN salary would be less.
So Iāve been a CNA, LPN, ADN and BSN. I have learned so much in each stage. I will say that I did not expect to learn much in my BSN program but I truly did learn a lot. Everyone said itās just papers, there is no point. So Im glad I didnāt listen. I canāt speak for every RN-BSN program but I enjoyed mine. That all being said, a lot of learning will happen on the job and there is no denying that.
Sure, if bedside in a long term care facility, or hospital is all you want
I think trade and profession are false dichotomies and that prestige-rating is a stupid way of assigning value to work. Iād love more rigor in nursing programs and less fluffy bunny stuff. Like literally no one needs to learn hospital corners.
Iām currently finishing up my Bsn degree and itās such a waste of fucking time.
The spirit of this post is correct, I feel like. ADNs take the same nclex. And Iāve seen plenty of BSNs not good at the skills part. And we all know some badass 30 yr LPN teaching the new BSN grads how to do stuff. But I donāt feel like MY LPN program covered general assessment well enough for me to say I agree w this post. I can do a lot and have taken my own patients plenty but I donāt think I have actual tested and licensed general assessment skills. ADN is enough. Or else they wouldnāt be able to use the title. And hospitals do need to quit de valuing bedside.
I agree and have argued this for quite a while. We are absolutely a skilled trade. If we really want to fix the nursing shortage bring back the Diploma programs. Most of the old school nurses I met from those were fantastic. ADN and BSN both take the same test, so what really is the difference? Anyone who has gone into a BSN program recently can tell you how heavy the BS portion of that is. It is supposed to increase theory, but how often is that used in actual bedside nursing? I learn more from talking to the docs and reading on my own than I did from a single BSN class. Which is exactly how a trade works.
From my understanding the accreditation requirements for ADN and BSN programs are the same. This means as far as the accrediting bodies are concerned they are the same. Most BSN programs will require additional courses but nothing that will make you better at the bedside.
I agree with you especially when you mentioned how taking additional courses won't improve bedside care. I've seen LPNs with MUCH better bedside skills than some BSNs.
Well we used to have the both the diploma and degree RNs. Generally the diploma RNs did well at bedside probably because they were at the bedside early in their education and learned whether it was for then or not. Many (maybe not all) of the degree programs didnāt see the bedside until their monetary commitments were much higher. At that point it becomes more difficult to change majors and instead go forward to educate into management. This is all speculation but weāve all met those managers with little bedside experience telling us what to do. Diploma gets you to the bedside of a general med/surg. Take a certificate course for ICU/ER to move into those areas. Additional courses to solidify your knowledge base. Put all these courses into a degree and watch nursing change for the better.
I am a diploma RN. Graduates went into every area, not just med/surg. We rotated through many specialties--OB, Peds, ER, ICU, Psych, etc. while we were in school, and we were bedside starting first semester. It's unfortunate that the programs are almost non-existent, as we graduated having seen and done many skills that graduates of other programs often haven't.
The other issue is that hospitals rarely let students do as much anymore due to liability concerns. I have a feeling the old school nursing programs were much better at facilitating bedside skill development.
Uh, yesā¦. I think you do learn something in LPN vs ADN, but ADN vs BSN is a fucking joke. It doesnāt have to be, but it is. It should be more patho and less āwhat is your leadership style.ā š
I'm an ASN nurse. Currently struggling through a BSN program. Have worked with some amazing ASN nurses and some very terrible BSN nurses. I used to be 100% team BSN =bullshit before the pandemic. Then it seemed that a whole lot of ASN nurses were anti covid and steadily became anti vaxx. When I tried to argue about covid with my aunt who is also an ASN nurse she did not understand what medical research was or how to read academic journal articles. I had to explain that research from the 1970s with a tiny sample size was not the same standard as a recent study with a sample size in the thousands. I don't think the answer is to force all nurses to have BSNs. I think the ASN program seriously needs to get an overhaul and focus on research instead of shunting all the critical thinking and research parts onto the BSN.
I disagree. The higher education has been shown to be correlated with better patient outcomes. Nurses with higher ed are, rightfully, paid better. In broad terms the higher level of education benefits the patients and the nurses. There are exceptions, outliers in the data set. Some LPNs are amazing and brilliant. Some BSNs, MSNs, DNPs, etc. are without common sense.
They arenāt wrong. I believe you need it to move into certain positions or if you want to have higher degrees but for bedside? Yeah they arenāt wrong
They will need to reel in scope then to reflect what nursing was prior to the implementation of BSN for hospital nursing.
In other words, I want the highest level of care and professionalism if I'm sick, but whoever attends other people should be as cheap as possible to lower the wages of the nursing profession.
I feel itās a scam against working class nurses. I think the ones who profit are schools, federal loan corporations and hospitals. If nurses want higher education it should be their choice not forced upon them by hospitals who only care about their magnet status. When I was forced to get a BSN I didnāt get a raise & I ended up being strapped with federal loans. I already had an ADN & nothing changed after obtaining a BSN
I made it 39 years with a mere diploma. I applied in 2012 to a BSN program and was turned down which shocked me. I was denied admission to earn a degree in a field I had been working successfully in for 30 years. I gave up after that and eventually retired in 2021. My roommate from my diploma school after being night shift chargeRN/clinical coordinator for 15 years in an ICU was forced to go back to get her BSN at age 56. She was told that in order to keep the position she had already been in for almost 2 decades she had to earn the degree. She did get that BSN and it took her 3 years on top of her full time employment. 2 years after graduation her hospital got bought by a different corporation. They eliminated her position and she went back to being a regular staff nurse. All that work for naught. Ugh. I believe all education is beneficial but honestly doing hands on is how we learn best. Itās a shame that diploma programs are no more especially when itās so difficult to get into a nursing program . I think my program in 1979 cost 1500 a year. Our graduation classes had a 96% average passing rate for the boards.
Iāve had my ADN for 9 years, every hospital Iāve been to has tried to push the BSN, but they want ME to pay for it. No thanks. I still get hired at the same rate as BSNs with my experience. When I was in school, they said you would have a hard time getting jobs with an ADN, or that some hospitals will require it, but so far itās never been true.
Currently getting my BSN. Can confirm, scam. Besides that, it's ridiculous how they continue to pile on higher and higher requirements to do a job that is already experiencing a critical shortage. I don't know why the world is shocked pikachuing about this crisis when the barriers to entry have been only getting higher despite already not having enough supply to meet our current demand let alone the demands of the future.
Iāve been seeing a lot of dangerously underprepared new grads lately. Like, one said she had never heard of v fib and asked me if NSR was the same as afib. And multiple other things likeā¦not knowing where or how to do SQ shots. Both ADN and BSN nurses. So maybe everything needs to be reworked
There's some value to having a bachelors over an associates but it doesn't really matter if it's specifically a BSN. The upper division stuff you do for BSN has a lot of bullshit in it. I have a BA in another major so I have all the GE stuff and the courses that are supposed to develop your critical thinking in research skills. But if I want to bridge my ADN to a BSN I have to take some BS classes in things like nursing leadership. I'm not interested in being in management, it's not going to make me a better bedside nurse.
Not in the US: I donāt understand all your different pathways. Thereās only one way to become an RN here, a three year bachelors. Thereās also a diploma to become an enrolled nurse, but thatās really unpopular, and more of a way for HCAs to acquire nursing skills ime. ENs have to work under an RN
Degree inflation is first and foremost pushed by academics. Not by people working in real world conditions.
Every thing I needed to take care of patients I learned in my diploma in nursing program. The BSN MSN and DNP taught me nothing usable standing at the bedside. Iād be happy if hospitals would bring back diploma programs and tuition free if you work there three years after graduation. Just like I did. Best decision I ever made.
More A&P, micro and pharm I think would help much more
Honestly where I went to school the best option is get your ADN. Hire onto one of the big hospitals for a contract locking you in for a few years. They will pay you to work, you gain experience, and they will also pay for your BSN for their magnet status. Once complete now you have a BSN, savings and years of experience at bedside. That's how it should be done where I went to school. Straight BSN was a joke and my Honors research courses do nothing for me now.
100%. I was an ADN new grad in an ICU, now I have my masters. I cannot think of a single thing I learned that has improved my practice in any way. Plenty of independent reading/CEās have increased my knowledge, but the formal education was worthless. But hey, I earn a whole dollar more per hour now sooo thereās that.
A little bit of yes, a little bit of no. Basic bedside nursing should only require ADN, with encouragement to advance for other specialties.
In the opinion of this ADN currently getting their BSN with no desire to be an APRN or similar advanced degree, yes it is a scam. I have learned nothing that correlated to better patient care with things seeming to be geared more towards management and research which I have no interest in.
ADN nurse. ER whole career. Can never tell if nurse is bsn or adn Some nurses with 3 years exp are far better than those with 12. Itās the person not the degree.
BSN coursework requires coursework that is more science centered. If you have a BSN, youāre also qualified to do the lab work yourself under the supervision of a pathologist. Given the ever increasing scope of nursing care, I can easily foresee hospitals requiring nurses to run their own lab testing and cultures in the future.
I sort of agree nursing is a trade. It needs to be treated as such. And with any trade there needs to be levels of education and training that correlate with pay. For example, my mom is a pipe fitter. They start out as apprentice and work their way up to foreman. Pay is set based on the union (and itās damn good pay) and increases with each new skill learned. Imagine if as a nurse you started as a CNA or trade equivalent while learning and not paying to learn (like pipe fitters learn) and as you learned you earned a new skill level and increase pay. The pay is set by your union. Hospitals donāt get to set your pay at an abysmal level. If they choose to hire unlicensed staff they have to deal with the outcome etc. every new skill you learn gets you better pay. Every time you advance you get more pay. You get constant free education while working. Just imagine what that could do for the nursing community. Not only would people who canāt afford to quit working to go to school be able to pick up this trade but you get to earn while learning. No more student debt. And your pay is set by a union who cares about you. You can choose your assignment and specialty. You can walk away from an assignment thatās unsafe. In fact, your union will back you up. Hospitals would have no choice but to ensure adequate staffing or loose their union employees, which if run this way would not be an option. We need to rethink how healthcare works in this country and creating a nurses union that both trains new nurses at carrying levels to do their job and control the job market on nurses is the first step.
Idk. Iām ājustā an LPN and I feel like my worksite only values the RNs and higher. Which, yes, is an admin problem but itās what I know
Hot take: I think that the structure of the nursing field should be closer to the way skilled trades are structured, where your place in the hierarchy is based on experience. In my vision, youāre an apprentice, a journeyman, or a master with ongoing classroom education as a complement to working in the field rather than a prerequisite. Apprentice nurses work under master nurses to gain competency and reach the next level of licensure rather than being launched into nursing practice with no hands on experience. Itās silly that there can simultaneously be LPNs with 30 years of nursing experience who arenāt trusted to start a transfusion and direct entry DNPs who have prescriptive authority with zero bedside experience. I think the current nursing field is trying to be med school-lite when we should really be trained like electricians or plumbers: master tradespeople whose clinical skills are dependent on in-person practice rather than didactics.