Need future career advice/suggestions please (rn > np, pa/something else?)

[theehawk95]

Hi

So here's my story

Im a male student and recently graduated with a bachelor of science in biology with a very good 3.7 gpa. Unfortunately I have limited experience in health care and have only worked in school involving laboratory.

I am stuck in a "what to do next" phase. I have been thinking of a few options that include 3-4 year optometry/pharmacy schools that will put me quite in debt or i can potentially go for a 12 month accelerated bsn program and eventually head into NP school after I get the clinical hours finished (if possible may anyone give me a rough estimate on how long it would take me to finish an NP program after I start working post BSN degree?).

I can also potentially head the PA route but I lack the health care related hours to put up a strong application. I'm very lost at the age of 23 heading to 24 and hoping I can figure out something soon as soon as possible.

So if you all may, what do you feel like is an efficient route for my future career plans? Is it normal for me to do an accelerated bsn program to ultimately become a NP as a male? Should I gain more health care experience and head into PA school? How can I utilize my good grades and degree into something else you would recommend? Please help as I am in a very tough spot.

Ps. I have been accepted to a few BSN 12 month programs and a few pharmacy schools that will cost a lot and is scaring me quite a bit

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[pamac]

If you want to do PA, your GPA is good enough that you should just find one of the many Pa schools out there that require little or no health care experience. There are more of them than there are schools other require a ton of experience. I would have suggested PA for your most efficient route to becoming a midlevel provider if you hadn’t mentioned you’ve been already accepted to accelerated RN programs. Here’s why: a bird in hand is worth 2 in the bush. If you apply to PA school this year, you won’t start until fall of 2019, and that’s if you get accepted. If you don’t, then you have to wait until 2020. But assuming you get in to PA school and start in 2019, you wouldn’t become a PA until 2021. That’s the same time you’d be finishing NP school. PA school costs about $100,000 on average, and you can’t work for those two years. You come out unable to practice independently, whereas in 25 states and counting (Virginia just started allowing NPs to practice independently a month ago) you can practice independent. This number will increase each year, as several more states are currently in the process of expanding NP independence.

Financially, NP school can be as cheap as $25,000, it on average you can expect it to cost roughly $35,000, and lasts 2 years. You can work during those two years and make money. I’ve been able to work full time making $85,000 per year while in NP school. I know several nurses who went straight into NP school immediately after finishing RN school and starting work as an RN. I took some time off before starting my NP program.

I recommend NP school for most folks now due to the value of independent practice that most NPs enjoy. It really is an important distinction that I appreciate more now that I’m finishing up NP school and am looking very closely at the job market and my opportunities. One physician friend of mine told me that although he likes PAs, as medical director of a facility, he can’t hire them because they have to be affiliated with a physician. It’s easier and more cost effective for him to just hire an NP, and they don’t require the extra cost and red tape of arranging a physician to oversee the PAs work. The NP can walk in and practice immediately and can take all responsibility. There is talk among PAs of a new initiative called Optimal Team Practice, or OTP, which is essentially their way of obtaining independent practice by insisting that they aren’t trying to get independent practice. It’s not going to catch on quickly. It took NPs 50 years to get half of states to be independent for NPs. That was hard earned. NPs and physicians aren’t going to let PAs advance OTP.

Pharmacy and optometry are good careers if they interest you. I’m just not interested in them, and can’t provide much insight into whether they suit you. They are a lot different than being an NP or PA, but they do seem to be great career paths.

 

[ultimateopportun]

do you guys think hes better off going for the accelerated BSN into NP in the future?

Don't you think that is going backwards?

With an elite GPA, I think you should do much better and go for something else?

What do ya'll think about my mindset on this?

 

[contemplating2005]

do you guys think hes better off going for the accelerated BSN into NP in the future?

Don't you think that is going backwards?

With an elite GPA, I think you should do much better and go for something else?

What do ya'll think about my mindset on this?

elite gpa go for med school

 

[pamac]

The OP didn't ask about med school, nor mention it. With a great GPA, med school should be a consideration, but maybe looking at 7 more years of training at a minimum with the accompanying debt and a locked in specialty isn't what they are looking for.

 

[deleted480308]

It depends on what means more to you.

If those are the only two options and you aren’t considering med school, if you want to be better trained between np/pa? I would suggest PA
If you want more chance at autonomy regardless of training? NP

 

[hamstergang]

Is it normal for me to do an accelerated bsn program to ultimately become a NP as a male?

Why do you think gender is relevant to this? Are testicles known to get in the way of working as a nurse?

 

[762513]

Why do you think gender is relevant to this? Are testicles known to get in the way of working as a nurse?

There are days when yes, they do.

 

[pamac]

It’s interesting that gender came up. Where I work there are increasing amounts of males as RNs and CNAs. I have to say that life seems to get better with the more males that show up for work. I can expect 50% of my peers in a given shift to be male staff. Some shifts it’s almost entirely male in most of my hospital’s units (excepting maternity). Last week I was walking around to different units as part of my job and the whole hospital, with the exception of maternity, had dudes running and almost entirely staffing every department. I actually had to make a mental note of where we had female staff in case we had something come inwhere we needed a chaperone for the male providers. But even a few years ago, it was the opposite. We hire cool people of both genders, but I have a great time working around other guys.

My circumstances are certainly not typical of the rest of the country, as around 10 percent of the nursing workforce is male, so my workplace is just different (and I think that we are rather unique locally but I really can’t say for sure). Around 8% of NPs nationwide are male as well, but interestingly, male NP wages are higher on average than female NPs and PAs, and also male PAs (so salary surveys a few years ago showing PAs with a slight edge didn’t bother me at all). Why that is the case is probably due to men negotiating harder, being more flexible because they don’t have husbands to go home to that expect them to work all day then come home and take care of the homefront like most women end up feeling pressure to do, and also due to males tending to be willing to be mobile in search of a better deal. Most women I know in healthcare are like me... they look at work as a mixed bag where you sacrifice some things to get others, and chasing salary is often less convenient than going to work every day in a familiar and stable environment. I just know more males willing to venture out of their comfort zones to chase more fortune. A better way to put it would be that it seems that males have expanded comfort zones regarding what they will walk away from if it doesn’t provide what they are looking for.

 

[pamac]

On the flip side, I’ve found that around 30% of the women leaders I’ve dealt with have been absolute nightmares vs almost none of the males. When you get a male that is hard to deal with, it’s usually just an issue of them being lazy. But when you run into a female nurse leader that is bad, it usually gets personal and petty real quick. Some of them will lash out at any male that isn’t appropriately deferential as they feel he need to be. The ones that drive you nuts are either in your face with the constant critiques, or they compile issues until they descide to spring it all at once and overwhelm you. But with the increase in males around me that I mentioned above, the environment has become better, and not just because more decent males are displacing a good chunk of the nut jobs that happen to be female (leaving awesome females in place), but it also makes males less rare, and therefore less of a standout target for angry females who want to lash out on them.

 

[deleted103644]

Why do you think gender is relevant to this? Are testicles known to get in the way of working as a nurse?

They often get in the way for many things. Poorly designed.

 

[wraths0n]

I actually have a similar dilemma.

B.S biochem degree and was wondering what to do next as a male.I dont have enough healthcare experience and i'm afraid that taking 1 year of accelerated nursing program will hurt my GPA in order to apply for Nurse Practitioner later on. My undergrad GPA was excellent but with just a little bit of experience in hospital or with patient care I dont know where to go from here.

so my main concern here is will an accelerated nursing program, if i do pass with C's and B's and make my GPA suffer, will that hurt me a lot in the future for a NP program? Are bachelor degree earners much better off doing PA? Would accelerated nursing going for another degree just mean you wasted time?

How about any other degrees/fields to look into besides the grueling 4 year programs? I just want a 2-3 year program to establish my career and get going.

 

[pamac]

Why are you concerned that the accelerated bachelors will be something that you won't be able to perform well at in regard to grades? I found the subject matter in nursing school to be easier than my undergrad biology degree. Lots of folks were studying much harder than I needed to, because they were seeing things for the first time, whereas I had mastered those concepts several times over. The nursing concepts themselves were more difficult to digest because that was new material for me. I really didn't know much about maternity care, or other topics related to the craft, but my work ethic that I honed in my undergrad applied to how I handled those new subjects. For me, I had to remind myself to respect the new knowledge, as opposed to looking at the new material haphazardly, thinking that since I was pretty gifted in the sciences that I would breeze through the new stuff.

The decision between NP school and PA school is best viewed based on where you want to be down the road, rather than focusing on the near term. That's something that can be a bit hard to do if you don't have much exposure to healthcare. Like most of life, we have to make a lot of impactful decisions that are difficult to backtrack on, and we make those decisions at times and in circumstances where we have very little handle on the big picture. With good grades, someone can very quickly be in PA school, and get started on working and making money. One doesn't need to subject ones self to an accelerated BSN if one wants to be a PA. If a person wants to be an NP, it can open doors. Without the BSN, the only path to NP means doing a direct entry NP program, which is bound to be an expensive and restrictive process (they aren't very common, and often require relocation to the few areas where those are at). But if you get an accelerated BSN, you have tons more options that can play out in ways that take a bit less time, and a lot less money than a direct entry program. And you don't have to relocate.

As it stands, those of you with prereqs already in place that allow for admission to PA school simply have to look at the two careers (NP and PA), and decide which one fits best with your long term outlook. For a while, I badly wanted to be a PA. What always gave me pause was the requirement to work for a physician. That requirement is iron clad and unchangeable, and comes with restrictions on your ability to work the way you might want to. Your ability to practice your craft is symbiotically related to your physician host. I chose NP because of the freedom, the power of the lobby and the future that it guaranteed, and because of financial and geographic benefits for my situation. I can practice independently in my region of the country, and new states allow for that every year. If an NP practices in a restrictive state, there's still the likelihood that at some point, the state's legislature will allow for independent practice. Where I am located, PA's typically make around the same as what NPs make, if not slightly more. But they don't enjoy the ability to operate under their own license.

Nursing is heavily female, but I've never looked at being a male as any kind of disadvantage. I work in a facility with almost a majority of males, so I don't think about gender issues much. I make great money for the effort I put in. I guess the stereotype of nurses being maternalistic still prevails among some, but to be honest, there is very little nurturing going on in the healthcare environment... certainly not to the point where males feel they are poorly matched. In fact, most outsiders might be surprised at how female nurses take on traits that are more stereotypically male vs. males taking on any traditional female characteristics. Taking care of people in the acute care environment has a very coarsening effect because, frankly, you meet a lot of fools. So instead of the males becoming more effeminate, the females become more hardened. You just see bad things, and sad things, and stupid things, and it pays to sacrifice emotional attachment to a certain degree as a way to cope. And when you need to bring out the nice version of you, its still there. I wouldn't get caught up in looking at things through the lens of gender roles in nursing. It’s no longer a gals game, just like medicine is no longer a guys game now that over 50% of med school grads are female. More than 60% of PA school grads these days are female as well. So while 88% of nurses are female, and 92% of NPs, men tend to do just fine. In fact, male NPs not only make more than female NPs, they also make more than female AND male PAs on average. So it might serve you better to shed your stereotypes.

 

[PolarSensation1994]

does anyone know how the licensing works for RN?

for example, say I pass the NCLEX in one state, am I allowed to move to other states around the country without any licensing issues?

also, how does the licensing work for NP?

 

[PolarSensation1994]

I've also been researching how long it takes to become an NP but I'm not fully convinced with the answer.

After earning a bachelor of science in nursing, what's the fastest route to NP? How long will you have to work as an RN before being eligible for NP programs?

 

[pamac]

If you are licensed as an RN in a state that is part of the interstate compact, then you can practice as an RN with minimal red tape in any of the compact states. Some big states have decided to opt out of being part of the compact, but even without that, transfer to s noncompact state to work isn’t unbearable, you just have to file the paperwork and meet their criteria. I can’t say for certain if there are states that require a specific state based testing regimen begin the NCLEX, which you only have to take once in your career. It could be that some place has a test of their own for their supposedly awesome high standards for their nurses, but I don’t know off the tip of my head.

There is talk of an Np compact, which would be awesome, but it’s not in place, so transfer between states at this time is more cumbersome for NPs. Each state has differing levels of supevision requirements for Nps, but about half of states are “independent” states where Nps require no physician supervision. Each year one or two more states become independent for Nps. No state is independent for PAs... they all have a requirement to be attached to a physician for them to be able to practice.

The fastest route possible to become an NP would be something like getting an RN through an accelerated RN program, and then immediately starting an Np program. Experience as an RN isn’t required across the board for this approach, but I think that it would be hard at most schools to be accepted without at least some token time as a nurse, but I do know a couple people from my ADN program who got into an NP program that allowed them to start working in their masters NP without getting their BSN (which required additional coursework). But you might find that seamlessly following a game plan for maximizing your speed through to becoming an Np might not go exactly as you might hope. You could do what’s called a direct entry Np program where you spend your first year getting your RN (which is a requirement for becoming an Np), and then you immediately start your NP program there. Those programs are more rare, and fairly expensive. There are some quirks to them, like some of them are set up to where if you don’t go all the way through to NP, you don’t qualify for the RN. That may have changed, but I’m not really wild about the whole concept that direct entry Np entails. But I do know several very good Nps who did direct entry.

By far, the most common model I’ve seen is that even folks who want to go quick to become an NP still spend some time as an RN. You are making decent money as an RN, and that’s handy for folks who don’t want to feel like professional students. These days most NP programs are set up to allow for you to work at least a little bit while you work on your NP, so nurses take advantage of that so they aren’t sitting home with an RN that they aren’t even using while they do Np program homework. I’ve worked full time through my Np program and only rarely have I found it to be remotely taxing. It’s just required some forward planning beyond what my procrastinating nature has allowed me to indulge in before I got into NP school.

I would suggest you change your mindset to try to enjoy life in the way to where you want to go, because inevitably you are looking at several years of applying, waiting for acceptance, training, working, and accomplishment, even under the best of circumstances. Nothing on this pathway is going to happen fast for you. You have no choice but to ride the glacier down the mountain. It’s hard to think about because you probably are at the age where you want to relax and get on with the regular life where you go to work, make money, and have nice interactions with those around you. But that’s not what this pathway offers you. There are faster ways to get to become an Np than what I’ve done, but I exchanged the fast and hard core approach that involved significant immediate sacrifices for a slightly more subdued and profitable approach for me (one where I’ve lived life pretty well along the way). But regardless, you will find yourself doing homework or studying on camping trips and vacations (if you get to even go on many of them), while everyone else is having fun. My relatives and many friends are free and clear of school and don’t quite understand what I’m doing. I usually have some school item that has an impending deadline each week, and I’ve been in that mindset for years and years. But I’m debt free and doing well. My stress is low and my family knows me. If I went full bore I’d be done by now, but I would have a hole in my life where schoolwork dominated over seeing my kids grow.

But whatever you choose, choose patience first because nobody will give you a fastrack to handling people’s lives.

 

[BC_89]

Hi

So here's my story

Im a male student and recently graduated with a bachelor of science in biology with a very good 3.7 gpa. Unfortunately I have limited experience in health care and have only worked in school involving laboratory.

I am stuck in a "what to do next" phase. I have been thinking of a few options that include 3-4 year optometry/pharmacy schools that will put me quite in debt or i can potentially go for a 12 month accelerated bsn program and eventually head into NP school after I get the clinical hours finished (if possible may anyone give me a rough estimate on how long it would take me to finish an NP program after I start working post BSN degree?).

I can also potentially head the PA route but I lack the health care related hours to put up a strong application. I'm very lost at the age of 23 heading to 24 and hoping I can figure out something soon as soon as possible.

So if you all may, what do you feel like is an efficient route for my future career plans? Is it normal for me to do an accelerated bsn program to ultimately become a NP as a male? Should I gain more health care experience and head into PA school? How can I utilize my good grades and degree into something else you would recommend? Please help as I am in a very tough spot.

Ps. I have been accepted to a few BSN 12 month programs and a few pharmacy schools that will cost a lot and is scaring me quite a bit

Before jumping to any conclusion, you need to shadow to help solidify what fits “you”. Decades of happiness at a career (more or less) trumps 1-2 years of missed opportunity cost when jumping aboard a career-path blindly.