Pre-Nursing

[Sunnybee]

I'm going to be attending a community college this Fall. I've been interested in Dental / Dental Hygiene / Medicine, but am now considering Nursing.

How is associate degree registered nurses? Education, salary, typical day at work? Are the hours flexible or are they long and on call? Is it better to get a BS from an undergrad then apply to nursing school? Or is it alright to go the Community College offered nursing programs? How competitive are applications to the program? What is your experience as pre-nursing student?

Thanks

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[PrinceVersed]

I'm going to be attending a community college this Fall. I've been interested in Dental / Dental Hygiene / Medicine, but am now considering Nursing.

How is associate degree registered nurses? Education, salary, typical day at work? Are the hours flexible or are they long and on call? Is it better to get a BS from an undergrad then apply to nursing school? Or is it alright to go the Community College offered nursing programs? How competitive are applications to the program? What is your experience as pre-nursing student?

Thanks

All nursing is awful. That being said here are your answers.

ADN is fine for what it is. You wont make as much as a BSN starting off (we had a dollar/hr increase for BSN)

Typical work day: Imagine Dante's Inferno and all the rings of hell but combined into one all encompassing hell. No, really, imagine that..... It really depends on the type of nursing that you are doing and if you actually like it. It really depends.

Hours: If you're in a hospital you are probably working 12hrs. You are locked in for that 12. If you work somewhere else your hrs could be different. In the OR your hours might be all over the place depending on how busy your hospital is on any given day.

Call: some place you will have little or no call. Some places you will get a lot of call (like in the OR). I worked a CV and we didn't make hardly any money while on call and we did not get paid any extra if we got called in. Once again. it all depends on where you work.

Degrees: I got my ADN at a 4 year school and then started working full time. I completed my BSN largely online while working. I could have done it in 1 year but instead I dragged it out for two. My Friend started BSN school at the same time I started ADN. I was out, making money, getting experience and paying off all my debt before he even graduated. Time wise, I think I got the better end of the deal. BUT do you want to deal w working and going back to school? A lot of people don't. It's your call.

Competitiveness: I am sure it depends on where you go and how good your grades are. If you have C's and D's it might be tough, if you're rocking a 4.0 I doubt you will have much trouble. At my school we had like 100 students day one and in a month or two we had about 60. It dropped steadily until graduation where we had like 30ish of the original 100. Obviously, they weren't tough on admissions.

 

[fab4fan]

Pretty much what Versed said, with a few observations.

Differential for BSN depends on where you work/where you live. None of the hospitals in the area I work give you a diff. for a BSN. Many don't even give you a diff. for having specialty certification.

Getting into a nursing program is extremely competitive right now, and even 4.0 won't guarantee you a spot. Wait-lists are very common, particularly in the ADN programs. Be very careful of the "for-profit" programs that offer you a guaranteed spot. Many of them are prohibitively expensive, and you will wind up having to take out a lot of money in loans. Given the current employment climate, you may not get a job immediately after you graduate. A lot of new grads are going months, even years without getting a job. Then you may only be offered jobs in LTC.

I think you need to be very sure that nursing is what you want to do. You talked about considering many different fields. Make sure it's what you really want to do. There are some good things about it; you can move around in different specialties and you may have an easier time finding a job if you move compared with other careers. It's very hard work and there area many, many down sides to it.

You may find some good information at www.allnurses.com

Good luck.