There are three types of nursing education programs that
prepare registered nurses for licensure. The first is the
baccalaureate program which awards a Bachelor of Science in
Nursing (BSN). The bachelor's degree program is typically four
years in length and provides a college education in the sciences
and humanities along with preparation for nursing. The second is
the associate degree program which awards an ADN (Associate
Degree in Nursing) or ASN (Associate of Science in Nursing). The
associate degree program is usually two years in length and
includes a basic nursing curriculum. The third program awards a
diploma in nursing. The diploma program is two or three years in
length and results in a diploma from a school of nursing usually
associated with an acute care hospital.
There was a time that a registered nurse could spend her or
his entire career in a clinical setting, never moving very far
from providing direct patient care. But today's nurse faces a
wide array of career choices that previous generations of nurses
would not even recognize. The most traditional of these new
career paths is that of the advanced practice nurse. Advanced
practice nurses work much more independently than was the norm a
generation ago. There are four types of advanced practice nurses:
the clinical nurse specialist, the nurse practitioner, the nurse
anesthetist, and the nurse midwife. You can see just from the
names that these nurses perform diagnosis, make decisions and
referrals, and provide treatment to an extent that was reserved
for physicians in earlier times. But nurses are also moving out
of the purely clinical settings to apply their nursing skills in
unexpected places. Today we have nurse executives, nurse
consultants, health care quality assurance specialists, nurse
attorneys, legal nurse consultants, and nurse entrepreneurs.
If you want to become an advanced practice nurse or an
advanced nonclinical nurse, you will need to consider graduate
school. The necessary first step to graduate school, of course,
is a baccalaureate degree, a Bachelor of Science in Nursing
(BSN). Many nurses graduate from their original nursing program
with an ADN or ASN. ADN to BSN programs, also know as completion
programs, are available at many nursing schools and provide the
necessary courses for a nurse to obtain a BSN. Also, some nursing
programs have developed an ADN to MSN (Master of Science in
Nursing) program to meet the learning needs and career
aspirations of nurses. Wondering which school to attend? The
National League for Nursing (NLN) has a directory of accredited
BSN and MSN programs listed by state on their Web site at
www.nln.org.
