How does one become an RN? I’ve looked at Northwestern U in Evanston and they don’t do any nursing stuff. I’ve looked at Loyola and they offer a BSN for practicing nurses. Same deal with University of Phoenix Online, a BSN for practicing nurses. This says to me you don’t have to have a bachelors to have an RN “certificate”?
Anybody have the low down on nursing?
Try a web search with Google.com and Dogpile.com for “Registered Nurses
degree” and/or “Registered Nursing Degree.”
Johnson & Johnson has a program set up to promote nursing you might want to check it out: Discoverynursing.com. R.N. is usually a 2 year degree though many jobs require a b.s.
yeah, I’ve tried that and I only seem to get sites with either unintelligible blather or that offer a BSN for practicing RN’s.
Oh, there’s always Clark University in Vancouver that mentions getting an associate RN degree, but Canada’s process is probably not applicable here in the states.
I guess I’ll just call the hospital or something. It’s probably a good idea to talk to a nurse and get a first hand view of the profession.
You’re actually looking too high. Many, many local hospitals still have nursing schools. It’s usually something like a 2-year program that graduates with an RN certification.
You can also contact your local community college to see if they offer a program in nursing. They usually consist of a 2-year program that graduates with an Associate’s degree and an RN certification.
One not of caution, like a lot of other professions, the requirements for formal training for nurses are being ratcheted up. You might want to contact the director of nursing at your local (large) hospital and find out what career options exist for people with a BSN vs. a certificate or Associate’s degree.
The University of Michigan has a Nursing school - I know because I live about a block away!
http://www.nursing.umich.edu/
Offers a BSN for high school graduates, and many other programs.
You might check with local vocational schools also. Because of the nationwide nursing shortage, many hospitals will pay for your nursing education in exchange for an agreement to put in a number of years working at their facilities.
One huge problem, of course, is that despite the nursing shortage, slots in nursing schools are very limited and competition for a spot is fierce.
Cradle the infant up to your breast…
Whoops, gotta read that OP. 
Anyway, good luck. My gf works at a hospital and says there are actually 3 or 4 different types of nurses, RN being one of them. So if you’re not sure exactly what being an RN entails, you should look into it a bit more.
In my area, you can become a Licensed Vocational Nurse (sometimes called LPN for ‘practical’) in one year at several junior colleges.
You can also become an RN (Registered Nurse) with an Associates’ Degree at many junior colleges, sometimes called AD-N, or ADN.
You can get a 4 year Bachelors degree (also called an RN) in nursing also, and continue on up to a Doctorate in Nursing.
Yup. i think nursing school has a lower acceptance rate than medical school now. Med school has about a 35-37% rate http://www.eckerd.edu/academics/nas/premed/allopathicstats.htm alot of nursing programs have acceptance rates even lower than that. A friend i talk to via internet says her comm. college has a 3% acceptance rate. The local comm. college has about a 35% acceptance rate. However, if you get As & Bs on yoru pre-reqs (algebra, psychology, english, microbiology, Anatomy & Physiology, chemistry, speech, developmental patterns, communications, etc), then you should probably get in. even though the acceptance rates are low its not that hard to get into a nursing program if you can get As in 100 & 200 level college courses.
its a really stupid system we have. for every 4-10 people that want to be a nurse, only 1 will be allowed into the program. from what i’ve seen of every 4 who are in a program, only 2-3 will graduate and alot of nursing students flunk at least once. spending 4.5 years on a 2 year associate degree is not uncommon. Once they get into the real world they are overworked and decide to pull out of patient care. Nurses in the real world dont want to work due to being overworked and schools wont train more people to become nurses so nurses aren’t overworked. Its a very inept system we have.
But to answer the OP, look up LPN or LVN at your local comm. college or vocational schools. These are very popular 1 year degrees im sure a few would have them. Most comm. colleges also have an A.S. in nursing degree.
However, even though its advertised as a 2 year degree its actually closer to 3.5-4 years. You usually need to do the pre-requisites before you can get into the program, so you have 1.5 years of applying to the program and doing pre-reqs, then 2 years of nursing school.
if you become an LPN you can do a transitional nursing degree to upgrade from an LPN to an A.S. RN. i think that only takes 1.5 years or so. With an A.S. RN you can transfer that to a B.S. RN.
Are you sure you want to be a nurse? (Thanks to Qadgop the Mercutan, who gave me the original link.)
In Australia to be an RN you have to do a Bachelor of Nursing degree, which is offered, in Queensland at least, at every university but one. It’s a 3 year course, with one year after as a graduate nurse. They don’t have any hospital trained nurses any more, again in Queensland at least.
I start my Nursing degree in a month, btw.
And Lynn, it could be worse, you could be working in a call center. It’s all a matter of taste :).
About a year ago my son, who has a degree in Anthropology from SUNY Albany and had been working in a casino for five years, decided to go to Nursing School. He applied to UConn and was not accepted, however he was admitted to the university and told that if he completed his prerequisites with at least a “C” he would be accepted into the Nursing School. He had to complete among other courses, Anatomy, Physiology, Chemistry, Microbiology; and he was indeed accepted once these courses were completed. My local JC has the same procedure. They started a Nursing Program last year and it filled up right away. I was never able, despite many, many calls, to find out from UConn how many applicants were accepted from those who applied; if being an older/male student was an advantage or disadvantage. The bottom line is that they were not forthcoming about any numbers or acceptance criteria, except of course the most obvious. So we have no idea if it was easy or hard; did he just get in by the skin of his teeth? Was it an advantage to have a BA? Was it an advantage to be a male? Was it an advantage to be an older student? I found this site on the internet and I agree that it is very frustrating to try to find a nursing program. This might give you a place to start: http://www.allnursingschools.com/find/
Inertia,
Did you intend the small joke in your sig line?
The word is “exuberance”, no “h”.
The nursing school in my area requires 1 1/2 years of prereqs, so the “2 year” associates degree will take you almost 4 years to get.
I dont know how many they accept, but once you get in, 2/3rds flunk out. It is very hard. If you can get thru our nursing program, you can get thru medical school and doctors make many times the money that a nurse does - that is why there is a nursing shortage in my area.
Once you become a nurse, you will be overworked, understaffed, get dirty jobs, treated with very little respect, and you wont make much more than $20 an hour no matter how long you stay in that career. Most nursing jobs in the country pay between $20- 30 an hour, regardless of experience. Jobs that pay more, are few and far between. Doctors commonly make hundreds of thousands of dollars.
A few hospitals in my area purposely cut down on the number of nurses to save money which means you will have too many patients to adequately take care of. They also have laid off older/“slightly higher paid” nurses in order to replace them with younger cheaper nursing school graduates and cheap Phillipino nurses.
Perhaps the real reason why we have a nursing shortage is because the pay difference between doctor and nurse is so great, and the intelligence needed to pass courses in nursing and medical school isnt much different.
AS far as being an older male, you will have an advantage in getting accepted to nursing school, but you will not find as many opportunities to get a job.
Most clinics and doctors offices hire only women not men, and lots of patients in hospitals request female nurses not men, and nearly all OB/Gen. etc. nurses are female - it is easier for a hospital to utilize and schedule female nurses since they can work any shift or any floor.
In the old days, before so many women went to/were allowed to go to medical school, intelligent women with high grades in school became nurses. Now they go to medical school.
It takes longer(a few more years) to get thru medical school, but not more smarts.
If you are smart enough to get in and thru nursing school, why not just go to medical school? Thats what the smarter women are now doing, which is why, as of this year, we now have more women applying to medical school than men.
Just an interesting little fact…my current doctor used to be a nurse. She says that it’s easier being a doctor than a nurse. She’s an endocrinologist, BTW, and old enough that she probably went into nursing because back then, very very few women were accepted into medical school.
Theres a huge difference between med school & nursing school though. To get into med school you usually need a BS in a field like Chemistry, biology, physics, etc. with a 3.75 GPA or higher. To get into a nursing program you only need As in introductory science & humanities classes. Plus med school is about 35 hours a week of school, 30 hours a week of studying. Nursing school isn’t nearly that hard, it is just very anal & unforgiving of mistakes.
Plus with med school you have 4 years of a hard undergrad degree like chemistry or physics, 4+ years of med school, then 4 or so years of 80/hr week residencies.
Read post #16. The nursing school by me is more than 35 hours a week, and its 6 days a week, plus it takes at least 30 hours of studying.
Redidency only takes as long as the field you are specializing in, from 6 months to 7 years for brain surgery. Residents are now paid way much more than they were 30 years ago, and they are treated like doctors.
I agree its more work to become a doctor , and more time, but it is not “harder” to be a doctor than a nurse - and it pays much much more. There are virtually no limits to what a doctor can make, depending on his specialty and what kind of practice he sets up. Nursing wages are quite narrow, usu 20-30 an hour with a few exceptions and only in a few locals, no matter how long you are a nurse. Nurses can be fired and laid off anytime a hosptial wants to reduce its number of nurses, or anytime they want to get rid of older higher paid nurses and replace them with cheaper brand new nurses. Doctors have job security.
If you think you can pass nursing school, then go to medical school.
Post #16 was by Lynn Bodoni, i assume you’re referring to post #15.
At the local community college here it is 5 hours of lecture classes, 4 hours of lab and about 12 hours of clinicals a week. 30 hours of studying would be far too excessive with that schedule. Perhaps the standards are different in our 2 states as over here only 1/3 flunk out or drop out entirely and several of the nursing students were not NASA material by any stretch of the imagination and could never hold academic court with people who get 3.8 GPAs in chemistry and physics, then go onto med school. Many of them got Bs in introductory chemistry, introductory algebra and introductory biology courses while med school students get As in 300 level math & 400 level chemistry & biology classes.
Over here about 2/3 flunk at least once, adding 1 year to a ‘2 year thats really a 3.5 year degree’, making it 4.5 years to get a 2 year degree. Some people here take 5.5 years to get a 2 year degree, no wonder there is a nursing shortage.
I still dont think its just as hard to be a nurse as an MD. Nursing programs are anal, but not necessarily as hard as an MD program. Spending 70 hours a week studying is not really realistic in an associate degree program the same way it is with a medical graduate degree. I guess it depends on how you define something like ‘harder’.
Residents are still paid relatively low wages for the hours they work, their wages work out to about $9/hr from what i’ve seen. $35k for an 80 hr workweek, that type of thing.