Step-mom got her RN at a three year diploma school that sounded like it was run by a former military nurse. Wife got her RN via assoc deg at a local community college (after getting a bachelors in a differnt field and working that field for a number of years).
She sees the BSN requirement at several local hospital systems. She works temp/PRN/whatever so it does not matter much to her income. She looked into getting her RN-to-BSN degree completion bit online, but decided against it on general principle after spending a semester on it:
1. The courses were worthless fluff with zero added value to someone doing actual nursing.
2. The grading was such that if you show up, throw crap that meets minimum quantity (not quality) in your assignments, and participate X number of times, in online discussions (no matter how asinine your responses were) you would pass.
It was essentially, "write a check, show up, go through useless motions, get your BSN...but most importantly, write that check."
...hospitals seek nurses with more-advanced degrees, partly in response to an increasingly complex health-care system.
This is laughable. The highest "tech skill" requirement is interacting with the (many times) risible electronic charting system. After learning three or so different systems, she can figure a new one out with little trouble. And hospitals figured that out, too, reducing their orientation deali-o down to a 4-6 hours, which includes other bits besides just the electronic charting.
The extra coursework required for a BSN is of zero utility, as this is a hands-on skill type thing like learing to use a spreadsheet or POS system.
The new BSN nurses have been trained to go deer-in-headlights at balky equipment. Whereas my wife learned the "three knocks to the side, then unplug it and start over" technique, the new BSN nurses stare at it and then call for a tech to show up. Who usually knocks it about and then power cycles if it still doesn't work.
My wife asks, "Don't they know how to do anything they were not specifically trained to do by rote?"
The trend in nursing mirrors a wider one unfolding in other sectors such as manufacturing and office administration, which are demanding more education and skills than in the past. As the number of job candidates with bachelor’s degrees rose during the recession, due to layoffs and people returning to school, employers began expecting degrees for positions that previously didn’t require them.
IOW, credentialism without a purpose.
Meanwhile, the Institute of Medicine, an influential independent advisory group, called in 2010 for 80% of the nursing workforce to have bachelor’s degrees by 2020. It based that goal on research dating to the early 2000s showing that hospitals with a higher proportion of nurses with a bachelor’s degree scored higher on important indicators of overall quality of care.
“The hospitals said ‘Where do I get the best value, the highest outcomes for the cost? From a baccalaureate nurse,’” said Peter Buerhaus, a nursing economist at Montana State University.
At the same time, the Affordable Care Act has put more focus on chronic and preventive care, prompting hospitals to seek more coordination and leadership skills from their nurses—skills that aren’t generally taught as part of associate’s-degree curriculum.
Well, of course folks who work within the university system think greater reliance on their wares is a wonderful thing.
Having worked at different hospitals with different conceptions of patient care and outcomes, she has become more than a little suspicious of the usual collected statistics. At the one magnet hospital, a great emphasis is placed on medicare/medicaid patient satisfaction surveys (which impact reimbursement). The thing is, medicaid patients are often the sort not to like doing what is necessary to get better, faster. The result is that weak-willed docs write up huge, redundant, and sometimes dangerous painkiller cocktails for drug-seeking patients due to hospital management pushing "patient satisfaction"
uber alles. (Drug-seeking patients are happiest when stoned out of their gourd for even the most minor of ailments.) Same thing with prompting patients to get up out of bed and something to eat. Many want to wallow in bed, which is about the worst thing for them. The big three, according to my wife are:
1. Manage pain with appropriate painkillers and keeping a gimlet eye on the drug-seekers.
2. Get ass up out of bed and walking ASAP.
3. Eat something, anything, ASAP and get a bowel movement.
Getting an indolent drug-seeking patient out of bed and walking the corridor and sucking down an Ensure or eating a meal when they don;t want to will generally result is a crappy medicaid patient survey.
If hospitals want management and business skills, they need to hire for management and business skills. BSN coursework will not provide them. An MBA might, as well as someone with a bachelors from a business school and time in the business world before ditching that and getting an RN cert.
A push by hospitals to obtain “Magnet” status, a certification that helps hospitals to recruit and retain nurses, also tilts the field toward bachelor’s-degree holders, since nurses in leadership roles at Magnet hospitals must have a bachelor’s degree.
Having worked at magnet and non-magnet hospitals, my wife has seen either zero or negative correlation between patient care and magnet status.
The extra 18 months or so of education often includes courses in things like leadership, evaluating research and the history of nursing, prompting complaints about unnecessary costs.
“What we had to pay for was just fluff,” said Rebeka Rivera, a pediatric nurse at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta who took those courses in the final year of her bachelor’s program. “You’re not taking any science courses at that point.”
Last time my wife checked it was an $8000 check, worthless coursework, and worthless regurgitation.
Article doesn't say anything about her having a nursing license.
I also thought a RN required several years of college plus an apprenticeship (they don't call it that) and was at least equivalent to a bachelor's degree.
RN requires coursework and hands-on nursing work taken from an accredited school plus passing the standardized exam. Does not need to be a 4-year university. Wife knows nurses who spent big-$$$ or got big-$$$ scholarships to get a BSN and a private university...who have repeatedly failed their exam and are not yet RNs. Affirmative action at work.
Most non-BSN RN cert programs are two years in length, but require stiff prerequisites that make it a three year deal for most folks. Also, the community college RN cert programs around here are highly competitive, much more so than the 4-year BSN options. Do not bother applying for the RN cert program with less than a 4.0 GPA in your pre-requisites, as they get more 4.0 applicants than they have slots.
I can't say I'm close to the issue, but I thought it was the same scheme as with programmers and other technical work; absurd paper requirements as an in for cheap foreign labor. A big company got in trouble in NY a few years back for having such terrible contracts the courts struck them as being unlawful under our constitution's ban on indentured servitude; Philippine nurses flown in and housed in ramshackle dorms with absurd penalty clauses for failing to serve their employment terms.
Hospitals love them Indians with BSNs from Curry U. Such good charters. Not so good at dealing with grave emergencies from left field, though. No matter, those electronic charts are to die for.
Absurd meaningless degree requirements WILL be maintained despite a shortage of needed personnel...the story of many fields.
Pretty much.
Most likely, every former home ec major saw the nurse shortage (and the ads from every associates-degree-online mill) and rushed into the first LVN/LPN program they could find online. Now, just like in several other markets at various times, there are so many that employers don't have to take them all, so the fresh-off-the-laser-printer University of Phoenix degrees aren't as useful as they were before.
This article is not about LVN/LPN, but RN nurses and nursing programs.
