<p>I was first a registered nurse then a nurse practitioner. The field has so many opportunities! It is also easy to switch from one discipline to another if you get bored. It is not worth it to go into so much debt for physical therapy. I am sure you could find a job in nursing that you would enjoy.</p>
<p>Couple of things to consider if going the nursing route. One does not go straight into an NP program after finishing a BSN. My employer’s program requires 2000 hours (2 years full time) of work as a nurse. If OP is in a hurry, take this into consideration.</p>
<p>Another is that as of 2015, the master’s level NP will no longer be an option. DNP is going to take longer, cost more, and OP already has quite a bit of debt. </p>
<p>Bottom line, don’t go into nursing unless you WANT TO BE A NURSE. It sounds like OP is interested in health care and nursing looks like the way to go. I think that’s probably a mistake.</p>
<p>NPs are great; BSNs are fine, but a basic two-year RN works about as well as a BSN where I live (though it is much more difficult to get admitted to the community college RN program than to any of the BSN programs in my state.) The BSN in my state is only required for school nurses (and there are very few of them left), and for some parts of public health nursing. And, given the choice between a two-year RN with two years of experience, and a four-year BSN without it, virtually every employer is going to pick the one with experience.</p>
<p>You’d be surprised how much independent practice an RN can do if one chooses the right specialty. My wife - a hospice nurse - officially practices under the program medical director who she might see once a week, and basically directs the practice of the MDs who never actually see the patients once they are admitted onto her service. So she organizes all the care, essentially chooses all the meds, works hand-in-hand with the social workers, and directs CRNA care in nursing homes when her patients are there. She never sets foot in a hospital, and only goes into a doctor’s office when she was to browbeat him/her into ordering the necessary prescription. She has only the two-year degree, and was hired with basically no RN experience (though she had cared for an Alzheimer’s patient in the past, and was a massage therapist.) Her income makes me gulp (but it allows me to retire!) - it compares quite favorably with a Wall Street analyst in her first or second year, with much better hours, and living in a place where the cost of living is half that of NYC.</p>
<p>I do have PT friends. They love their work. But financially it has been a stretch for them. One now works for Indian Health Service as a way of paying of her loans, and will be there for a long time. And then she will need more loans if she hopes to set up an independent practice.</p>
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<p>This is not yet a mandate, just a goal, and nurse practitioners who received a master’s degree will be grandfathered in and will not be required to obtain a doctorate.</p>
<p>Another viable option for you is physician assistant school. The salary is similar to that of a nurse practitioner, but PA’s are more medical based in practice. You also probably have the majority of the prerequisites completed (every program is different, but the majority of programs require biology 1 and 2, chemistry 1 and 2, microbiology, anatomy, physiology, and a class beyond general psychology). The only thing is, the majority of them require direct patient care in order to gain acceptance - working as a CNA, phlebotomist, medical assistant, doing hands on research, etc. There is much more flexibility in this field though, as opposed to nurse practitioner, because you don’t get trained in one particular specialty. This might be something else you could look into. These programs are two years in length, and they have many throughout the US.</p>
<p>^^ you’re right, of course. Nobody currently practicing will have to go back. My employer just started a last round of the master’s level program, to be done in 2015, but will be upgrading to the DNP after that. Still, OP will not be done with the BSN work experience before that time, so I don’t think she should plan to be able to become an NP with a master’s. It’s just not a safe enough plan.</p>
<p>* Many NPs don’t make as much as staff nurses and a 6 figure salary is not common.*</p>
<p>While I agree that six-figure salaries are not common, on average NPs make more than staff nurses. A beginning NP can make $60K per year. And I live in NYC and NPs here can easily make $80K. Mount Sinai pays their beginning NPs $96,000 immediately upon hire. Yes, there is that random staff nurse that makes more than a nurse practitioner, but they usually need many years of experience and/or an administrative position to do this.</p>
<p>You can indeed work full-time during an NP program - I have been doing my research on this, and many NP programs can be undertaken part-time. Nurse anesthetist programs are usually the exception because of the more stringent requirements, but other advanced practice degrees can and often are done part-time.</p>
<p>However, most ABSN programs must be undertaken full-time, because they are usually intensive year- to year-and-a-half-long programs.</p>
<p>I also think that it’s interesting that so many people are saying that there is no nursing shortage, when actual experts in the field and nurses themselves are saying that there is one. It is of course area and field dependent - there are shortages in rural areas, in psychiatric nursing, and for nursing faculty for example, whereas there’s probably not a shortage of medical-surgical nurses in NYC. But people who actually do research on these issues seem to agree that there is a nursing shortage.</p>
<p>It’s also not true that you can’t go straight into an NP program after finishing a BSN - more and more programs are shortening the required amount of worked hours/employment between a BSN and MSN precisely because of a demand for NPs in some areas. Not to mention these 3-year entry to practice programs.</p>
<p>A DNP is not that large of a time commitment after an MSN - most of the DNP programs I’ve seen require 18 months beyond the MSN full-time. And most of them are also offered in an executive format that accommodates full-time working nurse practitioners.</p>
<p>“And I live in NYC and NPs here can easily make $80K. Mount Sinai pays their beginning NPs $96,000 immediately upon hire. Yes, there is that random staff nurse that makes more than a nurse practitioner, but they usually need many years of experience and/or an administrative position to do this.”</p>
<p>My wife is a two-year RN living in a town where the cost of living is a small fraction of that of NYC, and in her third year made $88k. I doubt there is a single fullt-time RN (no BSNs or NPs) working in her service that makes less - those with more years in make more per hour. The administrative nurses actually make less, I’m pretty sure. (it’s a function of hours worked.)</p>
<p>Mini, I’ve often read about your wife’s situation. I would say it is VERY geographic. In the Boston area, it would be very unusual for an associate’s RN, 3 years out of school to be making that much. Here, it’s difficult for a new RN to get hired without a BSN in a hospital or many other places without experience.
I agree that the “nursing shortage” is very much related to geography and specialty. A new RN (regardless of preparation) has to be very flexible.</p>
<p>So why live in Boston with its high cost of living and poor job prospects when you can live in paradise, in a town with low house prices, no traffic jams, three colleges and universities, two symphony orchestras, an opera company, six playhouses, boating, sailing, mountain climbing, skiing, and (if you care) reasonably good schools, and virtually no crime to speak of (and where Brown is the name of a package delivery company?)</p>
<p>(And, specifically to your point, the two-year RN could have two years of experience before the BSN has any.) Putting that aside, the main point was that one could make a reasonable salary with reasonable job prospects with lots of job flexibility and relatively independent practices without being an NP, PA, or MSN.</p>
<p>The real question for the OP is whether digging him- or herself into additional educational debt is a good idea at this point. Will the salary obtained after further education cover the existing debt, plus the additional debt? If that’s not likely, the OP needs to work using the new Bachelor’s degree, and find some way to climb the income ladder. This might include promotions, changing employers, employer-sponsored graduate education after getting established with the right employer. Or perhaps the OP will get significant university aid for a graduate program, after work experience is cited to make for a more compelling application. Many graduate and professional programs prefer people who aren’t coming right out of UG.</p>
<p>It’s not clear that anything (short of medical school, or good grades at a top 10 law school) will permit the OP to improve his or her prospects when additional debt (and additional years of lost income) are involved. Even those. I know some young lawyers with six-figure income and six-figure debt who feel stuck in a grad student lifestyle and regret their choices.</p>
<p>I have had a fantastic career as a PT and am worried to read about the severe financial constraints of sadstudent in terms of pursuing a graduate program. It is not so important for a DPT to go to “the best” program. From my research, it looks like the least expensive way to complete the 2 1/2 year program is to be instate at a state institution. For example, University of Delaware, is an excellent program and offers a DPT for less than $50,000 tuition if a student is a state resident. The APTA website also offers information regarding financing graduate studies. Sadstudent could consider moving to a state with a DPT program, working for a period of time, becoming a state resident and reapplying after saving some money. I applied for a variety of scholarships for grad school and these helped with covering costs. Most of them were in the $1000 to $5000 range and were sponsored by community groups such as Soroptimists, Rotary, etc. I also used the debt cancellation policy of working with underserved populations, specifically children with developmental disabiities and getting 10 to 20 percent of loans cancelled after the completion of each successive year of work. PT has offered me opportunities for faculty appt, local and national consulting, clinical specialization, research and teaching, political activism, and inspiring work with individuals. I have really enjoyed the PT profession!</p>
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<p>Exactly, all the great suggestions will put this student, who already has a 6 figure debt, into further debt. ABN, ABN/MSN, and PA are all intense programs and the OP will not be able to work. Yes, if the OP gets a RN he/she can work and go to school for an NP. But I don’t believe those are viable options at this time.</p>
<p>Not trying to take over the thread here, but I’m thinking about switching from Pre-PT to OT. My current university offers both at the graduate level, and even though I am just finishing freshman year I need to decide relatively soon because they offer a special program for the pre OT students. It says its a combination OT BS/MS degree program so I am thinking you get special preference into the Masters if you are accepted into the BS program. I was just wondering if I should make the switch to OT, or if both are competitive fields to get into where the debt is not worth it. I commute to school so I try to only take out what is needed in government loans. I would love to stay at this school for cost reasons if I go on to graduate level, but I realize there is no guarantee where I may get accepted. I have not volunteer,or shadowed anyone in the OT field. </p>
<p>I am a Kinesiology major like OP so I’m trying to find something in the health care field because I really do enjoy helping people.</p>
<p>I’m also a 30+year PT and I agree with Coskat’s thoughts completely. Absolutely look at the work experience you will have in nursing because it is very different from PT. If you love it go for it. If you can do OT it is very similar to PT. In some settings the two can be indistinguishable and an entry level masters makes more sense. It seems that many folks seemed to indicate that there are limited options as a physical therapist. PT’s and OT’s also have the opportunity to reinvent themselved many times over if they desire. They can work with kids, old people, healthy people recovering from injures or people with devastating illnesses just to name a few options. Work can be in a hospital, nursing home, schools, private clinic etc. There are also many specialty areas that can be pursued with an entry level degree. The job market took a very small hiccup in the 90’s but I have never had a problem finding a job and the options to create a work situation taylored to family life is beyond what I imagined as a student. These opportunities are also out there for OT’s. PT is a wonderful career but 200K+ debt is not in line with typical expected earnings. There are PT’s that do earn huge saleries but this isn’t typical. There are young PT’s I know who work weekends and evenings to accelerate loan payment. It is sad that this education has gotten so expensive.</p>
<p>Coincidentally, I just had a conversation with a DPT. I was trying to describe a spatial conformation model using concepts basic to first semester organic chemistry (chiral features of enantiomers, and their inverse pairs in relation to an eventual output in abnormal physiology). This clinician indicated that organic chemistry was not a prerequisite of his coursework, nor was it required in most DPT curricula, and he didn’t know much of what I was talking about, but he was willing to look it up. I have no doubt this DPT is a very intelligent person, but it made me wonder what that 200K cost actually pays for. It seems like promoting and possessing a clinical doctorate should imply a certain level of competency in the operational use of disciplines that form the foundation of conventional physiology.</p>
<p>Transactional failure, for sure.</p>
<p>PolarBear: I pose this question to you as a bachelor’s level PT who never studied organic chem or missed it in clinical practice. Why would this be important? This could be a matter of me just not knowing what I don’t know, but there are many ways my basic education could have been enahnced and things I wish I learned more about in school. Organic chem nevermade that list for me.</p>
<p>Hi spectrum, so, this PT and I have a mutual client with a motor association cortex stroke. This client is unable to conduct functional prehension with his dominant R hand in a very specific but critical task context. The deficit is in ideational processing. A solution to this situation of “not having the motor operation” is to reacquire an executable skill first through direct motor reiteration, and if we’re lucky, we will also get another associated sensory template, without accessing the usual pathway. This pathway doesn’t work anyway but consumes effort in the client, if you know what I mean. We have to replace it. The practical side of implementing this method would be introduction of “corkscrew left” and “corkscrew right” hand fixtures to rebuild the motor sequencing because he cannot perform corkscrew right. The utility of organic chemistry in this situation is as stated in the concepts of spatial chirality in which certain inverses match in complement the way certain organic molecules match, especially, the name brand molecules that operate life physiology. You know how the way one conformation that is spatially inverse relative to another makes the difference between being able to digest sugar and not cellulose. Likewise, holding an object that is corkscrew left, but not being able to hold one that is corkscrew right. The meaning is not exactly “corkscrew this or that” but it is better described in analogy to the concepts already laid out in organic chemistry. I can spell it out for full clarity, but, you know, time consuming, reinventing the wheel. These are things clinical people should already know.</p>
<p>PolarBear: I don’t want to hijack this thread so I will reply and then if we need to discuss further we can do it as a PM. I am a bit at a disadvantage with your post because I am not an OT and hand function has never been the focus of my practice, I also never studied organic chemistry,( but chances are if I had much of it would be long forgotten by now.) I had to Google a few terms to try and get the gist of what you were saying. It sounds like organic chem really resonated with you and that you are able to extrapolate the concepts of molecular behavior into designing a treatment strategy for sensori- motor rehabilitation. (Did I get that much right?) I have been a PT for over 30 years spending many of them working with people with brain injury. I have never heard anyone describe a rational for therapy in that way. It is obvious that organic chem was important to your education. I do question the rationale for requiring an entry level doctorate. By that I mean I don’t know enough about the difference in education that resulted from upgrading from a masters to a doctorate. I do know that with a PTA degree remaining at a associate level and with PTA’s functioning as the primary clinician for many patients in many institution it is hard for me to comprehend how a PTA can adequately do their job when in takes a doctorate to become a PT. To me something seems very wrong with this. More importantly the cost of becoming a PT is difficult for the market to bare. My point is that I wouldn’t judge the quality of a program on the requirement to take organic chemistry or question a therapist’s ability to treat neuro patients or any other patient population effectively without this foundation. The only thing that I can compare it to is that I think my PT program had a more in depth histology class than many other schools had, at least at that time. As I result I probably have a greater understanding of tissue complexities than graduates of other schools graduating when I did. Yes, that knowledge is helpful and in some ways still part of me, but I don’t see that this all by itself defines the quality of the PT school I attended. We may just agree to disagree on this point but I see that the need for an in depth understanding of cellular chemistry inconsequencial in determining the value or quality of a DPT program. </p>
<p>I’m sorry OP this discussion probably didn’t do anything for your decision making process. I’m done now.</p>
<p>spectrum: It’s really the spatial concepts from chemistry, not the chemistry itself. I don’t know that much in detail about DPT curricula, but I had higher expectations. Perhaps not all schools have such limitations. I’m consulting neurologist for a group of hospitals and communication is difficult. Much of the basic science knowledge isn’t there because schools have not given the exposure.</p>
<p>My d has her DPT degree. She took a year of organic along with biochem, both of which were either required or highly encouraged as pre-reqs for several programs she applied to. Every institution develops its own list of pre-reqs although there were many courses on every school’s list. Org chem was not one of them!</p>