Steps to be a nurse practitioner?

juillet
Mon, 23 Jul 2012 23:55:15 +0000

Pediatric nurse practitioners are RNs. They are just RNs with more education who are licensed to do primary care. That’s why they are called APRNs - advanced practice registered nurses. In order to be an NP, you need a master’s of science in nursing at a school that is accredited to give you the training you need for licensing.

In any case, in order to get your NP license, there are several ways to go about it.


Apply to a direct-entry nursing program, where you are admitted into the nursing program at the same time that you are admitted to the college. You’ll start taking your nursing classes earlier - maybe first or second year. Graduate with a BSN. Then either get some work experience, or apply directly for an MSN in PNP. This will take you about 6 years (4 years BSN + 2 years MSN).


This is the best way, of course. If you already know you want to be an NP, then you should major in nursing in college, and then when you graduate apply for graduate school. It used to be that you had to get some years of work experience before being able to get your NP, and most programs still prefer nurses who have some experience before admitting them to the master’s program. But a lot of MSN programs will now admit nurses without experience directly.


Apply to a 2 + 2 program, which is a college where you are admitted first to the college and then you have to complete 2 years before you can be admitted to the nursing program. Assuming that you are admitted to the nursing program the first time you apply, you should finish in 4 years, and then you can work for a few years or go straight into an MSN program. Same amount of time: 4 years BSN + 2 years MSN.


The only difference between this and option 1 is that some schools don’t let you apply directly to the nursing school - you are a pre-nursing student first, and then in the middle of your sophomore year you apply to the nursing program. The problem with this is that nursing programs are often impacted, which means far more people want to major in nursing than they can accomodate, so they are often competitive. You have to have very good grades and high test scores on a pre-nursing examination (usually the TEAS or the NLN-PAX). A lot of people don’t get in and end up having to major in something else if they want to graduate in four years.


In the case that you go to a school with a 2 + 2 format and don’t get admitted to the nursing program, you could finish your degree with another major and apply to an accelerated bachelor’s degree program in nursing. These usually take 1-1.5 years, and are designed for career changers or people who decided later to get a BSN. Then you can get your MSN later. This route will take you 7-7.5 years - 4 years college, 1-1.5 years accelerated BSN, 2 years master’s. Accelerated BSN programs are also often competitive, especially at inexpensive public universities.
Get a bachelor’s degree in something else, and then do a direct-entry master’s program in which you can earn a BSN and an MSN in 2.5-3 years. There aren’t that many of these programs and they tend to be at prestigious schools - Penn has one, and so does Columbia and Yale. This is a relatively new model. It will take you 4 years to get a BA, than an additional 2.5-3 years to get the BSN/MSN, so that’s 6.5-7 years to finish everything.


In any scenario, yes, you will have to go to graduate school and get a master’s degree.

A nursing credentialing board has recommended that the standard of practice be the Doctor of Nursing Practice, or DNP, be the new standard for NPs. That means they recommend that in order to be licensed as NPs after 2015, all nurse practitioners should get a DNP (instead of just an MSN). It’s unlikely that this will actually go into effect, since it would require all 50 states to change their licensing requirements for NPs. However, it’s something you should have on your radar. A DNP usually requires only 2 additional years on top of a master’s, and the last year is usually a residency. There are some programs that allow you to get a DNP right after the BSN, and it’s 3 years of coursework plus 1 year of residency.