My Potential Unconventional Path to NP school

[audrey93]

Hey guys,

I am so glad that I get to collaborate with other aspiring healthcare professionals. My ultimate goal is to become an NP. Although, I am not entirely sure about which speciality I will choose, I am 23 and I have worked as a mental health counselor for 2 years in an inpatient psychiatric unit. I've also worked as a home health aide, done a moderate amount of research, and worked as a medical scribe. I've done service trips and they solidified my passion for the nursing profession. My undergraduate degree is in Clinical Psych and I have a minor in Kinesiology. While in undergrad, I did some pre-med classes as well. I had a 3.8 GPA but I enjoy going to school when I am committed and enthusiastic about the work. Essentially, I have decided that a career as a Nurse Practitioner would suit my personality, clinical interests, and my academic endeavors. I am very interested in health, fitness, and wellness in my personal life. After researching several masters in nutrition programs, Tuft's MNSP (Master of Nutrition Science and Policy) program piqued my interest due to the blended learned component and Tuft's reputation within the field of nutrition. I am passionate about nutrition, but I want to ensure that my decision to pursue a masters will supplement my career as an NP. For the MNSP, I would need to take Biochem, Orgo, and Physiology. For the direct-entry msn, the pre-reqs remaining are Physiology, and Pathophysiology. Granted there is overlap between the physiology, I would need to take 4 pre-reqs total for the MNSP and the direct entry MSN. I would probably want to complete the MNSP first because it takes one year. My ultimate goal is to achieve the Nurse Practitioner title. However, having expertise within the field of nutrition would be quite innovative as a healthcare provider. I am unsure about what specified track I will choose, but I can see myself in acute care, women's health, or psych. Any advice is greatly appreciated and thank you for reading my novel post here

Audrey


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[pamac]

Im critical of your plan for a few reasons (which I will lay out), but I'm not you. You seem like someone who enjoys the journey of life rather than just trying to arrive at the destination, and that's perfectly fine. I focus on efficiency, cost, and speed. If everyone was like me, the world would be far less colorful, so I encourage you to cherry pick what you want from my advice.

So one can hope to be innovative in a career, but you have to find someone willing to pay you to be innovative. Nurse practitioners get paid to diagnose according to established norms, and prescribe treatments that are standardized as much as they can be. You can mix some dietary suggestions into your practice, but your value as a provider to your patients and employer will come from your ability to assess and prescribe medication and treatment regimens. Dietary advice is useful, but patients will eat what they want, and most of what they eat will likely mirror what the general population eats regardless of your encouragement. Further, folks with mental health issues (or bad health in general) may tend to eat worse than the general population due to factors such as money, difficulty with organizational skills associated with their illness (the kind of skills required to put together and abide by nutritious meals), and just the fact that crap food provides fast calories and addresses their cravings. I've worked all over the hospital, and frankly, bad life choices/circumstances certainly play a large part in many, if not most hospitalization, but we see patients when the damage is mostly done. Being fat for the majority of ones life is a problem you aren't going to fix for most people. It's just too easy to stay fat. And nobody comes in to learn how to not get fat when they aren't fat... Because they aren't fat yet.... There's no problem to fix at that moment.

I love good nutrition. When I get newer employees on the mental health unit that wonder why the diet rules are strict with the patients, I tell them that at home, these folks can eat crap and snacks all day (and certainly do), but this is their shot at having a somewhat sane routine and diet. It affects them for the better for the time we have them, but it usually only lasts while we have them. The dietary advice and expertise already is available to health care in the form of registered dietitians, who do their job well, at a fraction of the cost of an NP. That's why dietitians become nurses more than nurses become dietitians... To make more money.

You will have so much to do as an NP just keeping up with all the unmet needs of your patients that you won't want to waste time trying to cure their ills with food when you could use your valuable minutes trying to get them to take the antipsychotic that you need them to take so they don't end up literally killing their children, themselves, or someone on the street who happens to come across them on a bad day. You can suggest to them to eat better, but they will walk out the door and be bombarded with 50 ads for delicious food before they even get home, then they will relapse into their cooking/eating habits. Best advice you can give them is to simply cut their calories to reduce their waistline. Don't care how they do it. Nothing fancy. But folks won't even do that. I don't even do that myself.

I'd suggest you get your NP first. That's where you get your clout. Get experience, then if you still want to do nutrition, go back and get that degree later. Tufts will love to see you coming because you will make them tons of money by going into debt yourself. That's the game universities play. They sell you on the idea that you can't live without their $100,000 degree, and you pay them money you don't have to go learn something nobody will pay you to do. Tufts won't give you anything someone else won't offer you cheaper. I guess you can then teach as an adjunct nutrition instructor at a nursing school if you get that degree, but your value as a worker bee NP will rest solely on your ability to diagnose acute illness and prescribe medication and acute care treatment.

I also would just knock out the MSN prereqs now, and not worry about the ones for nutrition. They might want those to be fresh if you apply later on to the nutrition program.