When applying to nurse practitioner school, will being psychiatric RN hurt my prospects?

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I'm planning to apply next year to a general DNP program next year, and am currently considering job options as an RN -- if I accept a job as a psychiatric RN, will this hurt me in terms of being accepted to NP school given the more limited clinical skill set? Will they feel like I'm not as well-rounded as someone who is in family care, etc.?

With all that being said, what exactly are the most important factors that DNP schools use in selecting their matriculants?

A huge thank you in advance!!!

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Most important factor at many schools? A heartbeat.

So it sounds like you aren’t doing a psyche DNP, and in that case, yes, you might be at a disadvantage at some of the more competitive programs. But the vast majority probably won’t hold that against you too much. It might affect your insight into certain aspects of nursing, but that can be overcome with some effort.
 
I'm planning to apply next year to a general DNP program next year, and am currently considering job options as an RN -- if I accept a job as a psychiatric RN, will this hurt me in terms of being accepted to NP school given the more limited clinical skill set? Will they feel like I'm not as well-rounded as someone who is in family care, etc.?

With all that being said, what exactly are the most important factors that DNP schools use in selecting their matriculants?

A huge thank you in advance!!!
Most important factor at many schools? A heartbeat.

So it sounds like you aren’t doing a psyche DNP, and in that case, yes, you might be at a disadvantage at some of the more competitive programs. But the vast majority probably won’t hold that against you too much. It might affect your insight into certain aspects of nursing, but that can be overcome with some effort.

NP programs take new grads, so no, it won’t hurt you, it just won’t help you as much as you might think. You really really really really really need about 2 years of med surg or general ICU experience before NP school. Really. I’m a DNP, just started as an NP, and I couldn’t function at all without that experience.
 
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If you get into NP school ASAP after getting your RN and starting to work, that gives you 2 or 3 years of RN work behind you when you finish school, which is enough. There’s no reason for someone to get 5 years of RN experience before entering the field. Many of the people who push that notion are people who have 5 years behind them when they start, interesting enough.

One of the things I wish I could do over was I would have started NP school as soon as I graduated my ADN program by finding a school that had an ADN to MSN bridge. Instead, I wasted time taking some time off to relax and work, and got a BSN. Then I went for my MSN in PHMNP. Could have shaved off quite a bit of time by just going for what I really knew I wanted to do. I would have been ready to work as an NP after only working as an RN 2 years (but most ADN to MsN bridges are 3, so that would have added another year of RN work on top for good measure I guess). So not everyone needs to languish on a med surg floor doing something other than what you will be doing as an NP. And think of it this way... every extra year you waste as an RN is one less year of experience you will gain as an NP. As a new RN, one would have to decide whether if in 10 years one wants to be an NP with 8 years as an actual NP, or do you want to be an NP with 6 years of experience because you waited to go to Np school until after you got 2 years of work experience. I’d rather have the pertinent experience as an NP behind me.

People shouldn’t underestimate the rote labor involved in nursing and equate it to the role of a prescriber. When I spent time on a med surge floor, and even most of the time in ICU, the workload wasn’t such that we were able to delve into the intricacies of patient histories, or do in depth research. It was simply time management to be able to get 60 things done with only the time for 40 things. The exposure to the craft is nice, and helpful, but you spend most of your time just trying to stay afloat. You can glean a lot in that environment, but you can also glean a lot from just furthering your education. I didn’t find it to be the most efficient way to learn most of the concepts that I now enjoy an understanding of after having had formal education through NP school.

Here’s another thing to consider... how well is school going to go for you if you are running several miles at night as a medical nurse vs your workload as a psyche nurse? I’ve done both. The physical demands of all of my psyche shifts were nowhere near what I was burdened with as a medical nurse. The stress level was different too. Psyche can be dangerous, but so can an ER, or just about anywhere else in a hospital. I’ve been to more stabbings and assaults off of psyche units than on the unit. Any issues I’ve ever had on a psyche unit was so much more manageable. The result of this is that I never had fatigue from work interfering with school. Conversely, I’ve known several folks who were so tired from work as floor RNs that they had less that they could put into their Np coursework.
 
Most important factor at many schools? A heartbeat.

So it sounds like you aren’t doing a psyche DNP, and in that case, yes, you might be at a disadvantage at some of the more competitive programs. But the vast majority probably won’t hold that against you too much. It might affect your insight into certain aspects of nursing, but that can be overcome with some effort.
A heartbeat and ability to take on the loans!
 
Anyone who can get student loans is appealing to programs of all types, which is why everyone is trying to open a PA school now too. It’s the entire higher education system altogether.

The reason why NP schools are thriving is because the work environment for nurses is getting so onerous. Why should an RN stay at the bedside and put up with new mandates each quarter when they could endure school and then come out with a job that doesn’t slap a tracker on your ID badge lariat that detects whether you stood in front of a sink for 30 seconds to wash your hands before walking out of a patient’s room. Then they want weekly meetups with a supervisor to go over any deviations from the tracker. I kid you not, that very thing is making my hospital admin salivate at the chance to implement it like a neighboring hospital system did. Add that to the sensor that detects whether you go into a patient’s room every hour to “round”, and the physical paper you fill out and handoff every shift where you sign indicating that you did exactly what the sensor detects that you did, and you have to get that signed by the shift supervisor before you hand it to someone else. Then every day someone comes in behind you and asks your patients how you did the day before, and how often they perceived that you came in to check on them, because it’s not only important to check on them, but to be perceived that you are checking in them. So you need to check on them, be perceived as checking on them, but also must not be seen as disturbing them (in other words, if they sleep through your visits, you are encouraged to tell them about how you checked on them every hour).

That kind of stuff is why nurses are taking their heartbeats to school to find a better job, and why crap is rolling uphill to affect the provider market as a whole. Physicians will feel the crunch when the same people making rules for nurses start looking at how cheap they can hire NPs vs physicians.
 
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Anyone who can get student loans is appealing to programs of all types, which is why everyone is trying to open a PA school now too. It’s the entire higher education system altogether.

The reason why NP schools are thriving is because the work environment for nurses is getting so onerous. Why should an RN stay at the bedside and put up with new mandates each quarter when they could endure school and then come out with a job that doesn’t slap a tracker on your ID badge lariat that detects whether you stood in front of a sink for 30 seconds to wash your hands before walking out of a patient’s room. Then they want weekly meetups with a supervisor to go over any deviations from the tracker. I kid you not, that very thing is making my hospital admin salivate at the chance to implement it like a neighboring hospital system did. Add that to the sensor that detects whether you go into a patient’s room every hour to “round”, and the physical paper you fill out and handoff every shift where you sign indicating that you did exactly what the sensor detects that you did, and you have to get that signed by the shift supervisor before you hand it to someone else. Then every day someone comes in behind you and asks your patients how you did the day before, and how often they perceived that you came in to check on them, because it’s not only important to check on them, but to be perceived that you are checking in them. So you need to check on them, be perceived as checking on them, but also must not be seen as disturbing them (in other words, if they sleep through your visits, you are encouraged to tell them about how you checked on them every hour).

That kind of stuff is why nurses are taking their heartbeats to school to find a better job, and why crap is rolling uphill to affect the provider market as a whole. Physicians will feel the crunch when the same people making rules for nurses start looking at how cheap they can hire NPs vs physicians.

Sounds like a nightmare. Is your facility doing this?
 
They seem to be working up to the full picture that I painted. The neighboring system is all in on that, which is where some of the inspiration is coming from.
 
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We have our own hellish routines that don’t make nurses happy.
 
They seem to be working up to the full picture that I painted. The neighboring system is all in on that, which is where some of the inspiration is coming from.
We have our own hellish routines that don’t make nurses happy.

I wonder if enough nurses won’t work for their system if they will scale back these practices. I can’t think of another bachelor prepared profession that is treated in this manner.
 
Everyone is moving to that kind of thing, though. There’s not many places to escape to. Like I said, another local system does that, and then the remaining systems also want in on that kind of foolishness. Everyone in the nursing world jumps around, so before long you see their old infection control nurse working infection control where we are, or their executive takes a job across town at another place and brings that idea with them to make a splash.
 
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