<p>Hi. This may not be a great place to ask this, but I'll try.</p>
<p>I'm currently getting a PhD in sociomedical sciences, which is a joint program in social psychology and the social and behavioral sciences in public health. I am in my fourth year and should finish next year. Currently my goal is to finish up, pursue a postdoctoral fellowship and then try to get a position as a professor with a low enough courseload (2-3 classes per semester) that I can get a good research career going. Some of you may know that the academic job market is pretty bad. It's not as bad in public health as it is in, say, English or history - but it's not too good, either.</p>
<p>One place where the academic job market is astoundingly good, though, is nursing. It was through looking for postdocs that I found this out. While most schools aren't even hiring in psychology and may be looking for 1 professor in public health (and not necessarily in my department), even the tippy top nursing schools I've looked at have advertised positions for 3-4 nursing professors, many in fields I'm interested in.</p>
<p>In the course of searching for postdocs I've realized that nursing researchers do the SAME work I'm interested in (which is the intersection between mental health and HIV in women, access to care for both mental health services and HIV in women, and patient-provider relationships in both areas, as well as the use of nurses and other mid-level providers in both areas). The difference is that they have a clinical competency, they have far more geographical freedom because of the national shortage of nursing professors, and they get paid more.</p>
<p>So anyway, I guess what I'm looking for is some encouragement/advice from those in the know? I've figured out that with my PhD in public health, I could get an MSN in nursing and teach at a school of nursing...I think. I would have to get an accelerated BSN first, but I've looked around and realized that I could get an accelerated BSN + an MSN in psychiatric-mental health nursing (which would be my goal) in 2-2.5 years, not including prerequisites. Anyone here know anything about this?</p>
<p>I’ve found varying answers to that question. It seems that the past model is that most nurse educators are MSN-prepared nurses with years of experience (10 on average, often more). In that case, I would be at a disadvantage.</p>
<p>But I’ve been doing a lot of background reading that indicates that the nursing shortage is partially due to a nursing faculty shortage, and the nursing faculty shortage is partially due to an aging faculty workforce and the lack of doctorally prepared nurses. It still appears that most current nursing professors have years of experience before becoming professors of nursing, but I’ve seen all kinds of new programs pop up to encourage people to go into nursing education, and it appears that even the top nurses within the field are encouraging a model more like the regular academic one - where a nurse gets a BSN, perhaps works for a year or two and then goes directly into a PhD or MSN/PhD program to be prepared as a faculty member. Some of the top nursing schools are starting PhD programs that don’t require MSNs and don’t require as much experience anymore. There are also a lot of top schools that have accelerated BSN/MSN programs, in which a person with a non-nursing BA can acquire a BSN and an MSN in 2-3 years.</p>
<p>I guess my wondering is whether or not this model is actually taking hold. Most of the advertisements I’ve seen for nursing professors on the tenure track seem to require a PhD in nursing or a related field (sometimes a related field requires an MSN, and sometimes it doesn’t) and a record of research, funding and publication. They don’t seem heavy on the experience requirements.</p>
<p>Any ads I have seen for nurse educators required you have a MSN which is why I believe you see so many Nurse Professor jobs. I do not know how it is now but when I was in school, nursing instructors used to also be responsible for a rotation of nursing students in a hospital so you need real hands on experience to assist students in putting in IVs or catheters. </p>
<p>So my maternity instructor taught maternity but also was responsible for a team of nursing students doing maternity. You would need to investigate what the responsibilities are of a nursing instructor to see if you were able to fulfill that part of the role as you would have very limited hands on experience yourself.</p>
<p>As a practicing nurse I would be concerned about this program. As a member of the Nursing faculty, part of your job will be supervising you students in clinical settings. Realistically, you cannot do this without having actual clinical experience, Frankly, I don’t know any well-respected university that would even accept a nurse into their Graduate program without actual clinical experience. i.e. You have to have worked as a nurse in clinical setting and it would be best if it was in a high-acuity setting such as an ICU or step-down unit. You are accepting a huge amount of responsibily when you take your students into a clinical setting and you cannot instruct them on patient care without having done it yourself. </p>
<p>Also, take a look at job ads for nursing faculty. The expectation is that those nurses will have significant clinical experience. </p>
<p>Not wanting to discourage you, but Nursing faculty is not like other college faculty. It requires that you have actually worked as a nurse. </p>
<p>Nursing today is complex. Some states won’t even renew your license if you are not actively working in a nursing field and most nurses who have not practiced in 5 years are required to take expensive nurse refresher courses before anyone will hire them.</p>
<p>Most of the top nursing schools accept MSN students who have no clinical experience. Yale, Penn, and Columbia all have 3-year programs that are designed for students with no nursing experience to earn their BSN and MSN in 3 years, without a break, and there are now programs like the Hillman Scholars program that take students straight through the BSN into the PhD without any clinical working experience. A lot of new nursing PhDs are getting their PhD straight from BSN or MSN work, without much if any work experience. I’m not saying this is good or bad, just is. There are also plenty of non-nurse faculty members with PhDs in other fields - anthropology, psychology, sociology - who teach non-clinical courses.</p>
<p>I also have been looking at job ads for nursing faculty and none of them require significant clinical experience, actually. They require a program of research, much like other faculty positions do. I’ve been looking into this and there are actually many nursing faculty members who haven’t practiced in years.</p>
<p>But I think I was misunderstood - I wasn’t speaking about teaching clinical courses with zero experience, as I don’t even think that’s legal. I was talking about the possibility of getting a BSN/MSN after a PhD and getting that clinical experience, and then teaching - possibly by working for a few years (~5) as a nurse practitioner first, teaching part-time, and then applying to be a full-time nursing faculty member who does research and teaches courses. My question was really about this because most people do it the other way - get the MSN before the PhD and go straight into faculty. I do have a nursing school right on my campus, though, so I guess I could speak with nursing faculty here.</p>
<p>I am finishing my MSN next year. You may want to look into DNP programs also. They can be completed in about 18 months -2yrs after a MSN. My specialty is PH and global health. We have similiar academic interests.</p>
<p>Juillet- You have a great plan and a great mind. You certainly have the drive and the ambition, so make a path for yourself. I am impressed by your curiosity and your knowledge. Speak with the nursing department at your school and ask for assistance. Where there is a will, there is a way. If you put it out there, you will get information and assistance and it may just light up a new pathway for you. As Jean Luc Picard says… “Make it So!”</p>