Everyone knows the traditional path to becoming a nurse. You go to college, work your way through four years of crippling education and come out the other end the price of a starter home poorer, but ready to take on the world.
There are other paths toward certification—some of them cheaper, others (potentially) more conducive to balancing your responsibilities with a busy lifestyle.
In this article, we take a look at how difficult it is to pivot into a nursing career without needing an additional degree. We will also examine situations where getting additional credentials is both required and well worth it.
Can You Pivot Into a Nursing Career Without Needing an Additional Degree?
It depends on your background. If you already have an undergraduate degree—even in an unrelated field—you will not need to go back to school and start at the beginning. You do, of course, still need to be trained. For this, there are two options:
- Accelerated Program: Accelerated nursing programs allow you to knock out all of the educational requirements in two years or less. The actual timeframe will depend on the program you pick—some are only eighteen months—but no matter what, it will definitely be less than four years. Accelerated programs are intense, but they will help you make that transition quickly. If you aren’t interested in that route, you can always consider…
- Certification Only: Certification-only paths allow you to basically add a nursing degree to your existing credential. You take the same nursing classes as any other nursing student, but you get to skip all of the electives and prerequisites. It is cheaper than a full degree and less time-consuming.
Certification-only programs can take 2-3 years depending on how much time you have to dedicate to the process. Both of these routes are good in that they allow you to begin working as a nurse relatively quickly, but they aren’t going to work for people who don’t already have college degrees. In that case, you will need to start from the beginning.
While that may not be the news you wanted, the process of pivoting into a new discipline can be flexible and even fun.
Different Ways to Get Your Degree
Most people go to a physical campus location to get their nursing degree. For the majority of modern collegiate education history, that was the only option available to them. Now, as telecommunication technologies continue to improve, it is easier than ever to get even a nursing degree online.
Online nursing programs provide a lot of flexibility in that you can complete almost all of your requirements from home, and you can even have some flexibility in the format this instruction is delivered.
Some programs meet through Zoom and are basically no different than a classroom lecture. Some consist only of pre-recorded materials.
There are even some “online” programs that incorporate traditional, in-person lectures into the rotation.
Here are some things you should keep in mind if you are going to start from the beginning:
- Timeline: While completion timelines can vary, you shouldn’t expect it to take less than four years. This timeline assumes that you are taking on an almost full-time schedule.
- Certification: Just because you have your degree does not mean that you are certified to work as a nurse. You will need to pass the NCLEX after graduation—a standardized test that determines if you get your license.
- Legality: This concern primarily impacts people who are interested in online programs. You need to make sure that the school you choose is fully accredited.
Note that accreditation can take two forms. There is national accreditation—basically meaning that the program is recognized by the federal government—and local accreditation. This means that the program is recognized by your state.
While national accreditation may sound better, you actually need to focus more on finding programs that are locally accredited.
For example, the state of Arizona might only recognize three of the fifty (madeup number) online programs that are nationally accredited. If you plan to work in Arizona, you will need to choose one of those three programs.
Keep in mind also that even if you are doing an online program, you will still need to complete clinical experience requirements.
The Next Step
If you feel like you are on an educational roll and you just want to keep the good times going, graduate school is the next step. Nurses with graduate degrees open the door to leadership positions within hospital systems.
Nurses who go on to get their PhD can even open the door to the C-Suite—stepping into an executive role with a salary potential of more than $200,000. Alternatively, you might also use a graduate degree to become certified as a nurse practitioner—specializing in whatever area of medicine interests you the most.
Obviously, the premise of this article is to “pivot,” into a healthcare career with as little friction as possible. Getting a PhD doesn’t really fit that criteria. Still, it does help to think about all of the different paths you can take once you have become an RN.
And if, as a nurse, you want to pivot without enrolling in graduate school? You will find that there are still plenty of options available to you.
There are TONS of secondary certification opportunities that you can take on as you work as a nurse. Often, you will be able to get a job that requires additional certification even before you have earned the credential.
These certification programs can take a while to complete—sometimes more than a year—but the requirements are less demanding than those of college. Most of the work will just involve getting experience, which you can do on the job.
Conclusion
The career “pivot,” has become a popular move in the last few decades. People live longer. They work longer. They think more about what makes them happy on the job. The average worker simply does not feel willing to dedicate forty years of their life to a job that makes them miserable.
Healthcare career pivots are popular because people who want to migrate jobs often look for work that they find meaningful.
Pivoting into nursing isn’t easy, but it doesn’t need to be overwhelmingly hard either. Explore your options. You’ll find that there are a lot of them.
Photo Credit
Image by Sebastián García from Pixabay
Guest Author Bio
Sarah Daren
With a Bachelor’s in Health Science along with an MBA, Sarah Daren has a wealth of knowledge within both the health and business sectors. Her expertise in scaling and identifying ways tech can improve the lives of others has led Sarah to be a consultant for a number of startup businesses, most prominently in the wellness industry, wearable technology and health education. She implements her health knowledge into every aspect of her life with a focus on making America a healthier and safer place for future generations to come.
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