msn nursing

Key Facts You Should Know Before Applying For A Nursing Graduate Degree Program

Nursing Job Titles | Graduate Degree Scholarships | Ethnic Diversity In Master’s Programs | Salaries For Nursing Master’s Degree Holders | Nursing Leadership Advice

nursing graduate degree jobs RNs who’ve built up solid work experience often start to think about ways they can get their nursing career to a higher level. A route most consider is getting a graduate nursing degree.
Click to a list of nursing master’s degree schools.

Advanced Nursing Career Paths

Nurses who go for a masters are generally interested in one of the career paths below:
First, a class of jobs that fall under the heading of “Advanced Practice Registered Nursing” (APRN). Four types of APRNs are:

Nurse Practitioner: A specialty that incorporates many of the basic diagnostic jobs and treatment once performed only by MDs. Nurse practitioners are now often the first medical specialist seen by patients coming into clinics, hospitals or private medical offices. In many states, they are allowed to prescribe drugs.
Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist: Nurses who administer anesthetics. This is an old specialty, but one where practice parameters vary tremendously from one state to another.
Clinical Nurse Specialist: A broad category of advanced nursing practice that can involve treating mental and physical health issues, administration, research and consultation.
Certified Nurse Midwife: These specialists help women with low-risk obstetrical and gynecological care in birth centers, hospitals and sometimes even homes.

Two other types of careers MSN holders often pursue that are not considered Advance Practice Registered Nursing are:

Nurse Educator: A job that involves teaching younger or newer nurses a wide variety of skills, generally in a hospital or other larger clinical treatment facility. Some nurse practitioners also teach in a college or university setting.
Public Health Nurse: A job that involves working in a medical center, a community organization or even the government to help develop better policies on treating and working with patients in the community.

Interesting Facts To Know About Career Paths With An MSN Nursing:

Increasing Ethnic Diversity in Nursing Master’s Degree Programs

The population enrolling in master’s nursing programs in the U.S. is becoming more diverse. According to data from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing:

About 14.7% of all nursing masters degree students were African-American, up from 11.8% in 2007.
The percentage of Latino / Hispanic masters students rose more sharply during the same period, from 4.9% in 2007 to 14.7% in 2017.
That’s all against a background where the number of nursing masters students has risen dramatically. There were fewer than 55,000 students in U.S. nursing masters programs in 2007. By 2017, that number had shot up to more than 116,000.

Scholarships for Graduate Nursing Students

There’s a widespread misconception that scholarships only exist for bachelor’s degree students in nursing. In fact, there’s a wide range of top scholarship programs for nursing master’s students as well.

It’s important to do your research when it comes to scholarships. Application deadlines vary a great deal from one to another, and many scholarships are not offered every single year. A few scholarships to consider:

Oncology Nursing Foundation: $5,000. scholarships to RNs in a master’s program who are committed to oncology nursing. May be awarded to nursing master’s students who possess a BSN degree or those with a bachelor’s degree in another subject. For more information click here.

March of Dimes Dr. Margaret C. Freda Graduate Nursing Scholarship Award: $5,000. scholarships to RNs who are enrolled in graduate programs focused on maternal-child nursing. Applicant must be a member of The Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses, The American College of Nurse-Midwives or the National Association of Neonatal Nurses. Click for more information.

American Cancer Society Scholarship: $10,000 scholarship for a student pursuing a master’s degree in cancer nursing or a doctorate degree in nursing practice. The award is $10,000 per year, and may be given for two years. More information here.

Dean Hayden Student Research Scholarship – Nurse Anesthetists: Up to $5,000 to a student of nursing anesthesia who is a member of the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists (AANA). Applicant must write an essay on how his or her research in school will benefit nurse anesthetists. Click to download information.

Nurses Educational Funds Scholarship: $2,500 to $10,000 to full or part time registered nurses pursing a master’s or doctoral degree from an accredited school. Must have completed at least 12 credit hours of the program and have a minimum 3.6 GPA. More info here

For a listing of many other scholarships open to graduation nursing degree students, click here.

Salaries for Advanced Care Nurses

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks career opportunities and salaries for Nurse Anesthetists, Nurse Midwives, and Nurse Practitioners. It’s most recent (2016) statistics show a positive outlook for these advanced practitioners with a master’s degree in nursing.

Median pay: $107,460 per year / $51.67 per hour.
Number of Jobs (2014): 170,400.
Job Outlook 2014 – 2014: 31%, much faster than average. The highest job growth rate projected for this period is for nurse practitioners, at 35%.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Leadership Advice For Nurses With Graduate Degrees

Most advanced nursing jobs involve a greater element of leadership than jobs held by BSN’s – leadership of a clinic, of the nurse education program for a hospital or, in some cases, simply being the top person in charge of a critical task, as in the case of nurse anesthetists. We looked at a variety of interviews with Nursing School deans, and some of the key pieces of advice they gave for nursing leadership include:

Take time to build your credibility with your staff nurses.
Learn to be a better public speaker
Listen to other nurses when they want to give you their opinions.
Stay committed to leadership, ever when it’s difficult.
Remember that leadership is truly a form of service.

More leadership advice on this video from the Graduate Nursing Student Academy:

More about requirements for nursing master’s degrees, RN to MSN degrees and nurse practitioner specialty degrees here.

Does a Master’s in Nursing Administration Qualify You To Be A Director of Nursing?

By Paul Mannet

msn to be director of nursing If you have already worked as a nurse for several years, you may be looking for a new horizon with a nursing director job that puts your clinical knowledge to work but involves some new and challenging tasks.

Experienced RNs often look to a Master’s in Nursing degree as a way to become qualified for a more senior position. If becoming a director of nursing is the career path that interests you, there are several different degrees that might help you. It’s not necessarily easy to choose which type of MSN to pursue.

Although nurses without master’s degrees are often given administrative responsibilities, most who are appointed to the position of nursing director have an MSN nursing. It may seem obvious that a nursing management degree would the key qualification for a director of nursing job, there are other degrees with names like clinical leadership, executive leadership or nurse leadership that offer some of the same knowledge. Just to complicate things more, it’s not unusual for a nursing director to be appointed who has a master’s in health care administration or, a bit more rarely, an MBA.

The Nursing Director Job Description

There can be a real distinction between nursing director positions in large and small health facilities. At a very large hospital or long-term care setting, the nursing director may be responsible for several different departments and spend most of his or her time working on financial, HR or health policy issues. The job may also involve a great deal of time in meetings and writing out business plans and directives. The director, sometimes called the “Chief Nurse Executive,” may be occupied almost all the time interfacing with business and management people rather than other nurses. Senior nurse managers generally stop providing any direct patient care to focus on leadership functions.

In smaller facilities, the shift from bedside nursing to management may be very gradual. Nurse managers are salaried, so they’re not paid overtime like most RNs. As a result, a nurse who has recently moved into management may actually see a drop in salary for a period, until his or her salary rises to a point where it counterbalances the loss in overtime. Middle management can also be stressful, since the nurse manager tends to receive work pressure both from the senior management above and the nursing staff below.

Test Run

Some RNs try to get a “taste” of nursing management before they start an MSN program by simply working their way up into jobs like “head nurse” or “assistant unit manager.” It can be a good way to improve skills at working with many different nurses, doctors and managers before focusing on a truly senior nursing management job. Other skills like writing work schedules, coordinating meetings and making personnel decisions can be honed while working in middle management.

It If you believe you have leadership qualities, you may consider an MSN in nurse leadership that will sharpen your skills in areas like staff management, budgeting, treatment planning, case management, discharge planning and scheduling. Two additional areas of important skills are finance and informatics, which will generally require you to learn how to use several.

Nursing Director Salaries

Salaries for nursing directors: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that medical and health service managers earn a median salary (figure for 2016) of $96,540 per year. The number of jobs in this specialty is expected to grow 17%, between 2014 and 2024, much faster than the average for most U.S. jobs. According to U.S.B.L.S., medical and health services managers work in office settings at healthcare facilities, nursing homes and group medical practices, and must know how to direct changes that conform to new regulations, healthcare laws and technologies.

Does Getting A Nursing MSN Mean You’ll Never Again Work At Bedside Nursing?

By Paul Mannet

Click To List Of MSN Degree Programs

A master’s degree in nursing can open the door to more senior nursing, education or management jobs that are less focused on direct bedside care nursing. But job descriptions for MSN holders vary a great deal from one hospital to another. There’s often a lot of flexibility based on what an individual nurse wants to do. Many, after all, don’t necessarily want to completely stop with bedside nursing as their careers advance. Some key points on the subject of MSN’s and bedside nursing:

Jobs Vary From One Hospital To Another

If you earn an MSN and keep on working at a hospital you were at previously – a scenario that’s very likely if the hospital helped pay for your MSN program – there may not be a nurse educator or manager position open right away, you can step into on a full-time basis. Hospitals have all kinds of budgetary ups and downs, and it’s not unusual for them to ask an MSN holder to remain in bedside care nursing on a part-time or even full-time basis until a completely non-clinical position opens.

Do You Really Want To Stop All Bedside Nursing?

A key attraction of advanced nursing positions is that they may involve less physical stress – a big consideration as a nurse ages – as well as a regular schedule involving less work on weekends, holidays or on night shifts. That said, some MSN holders like to keep a hand in bedside nurses to keep their skills sharp, and because they simply find the human contact with patients to be rewarding. Some MSN holders actually hold a few part-time jobs, some of which involve direct patient care and some of which don’t. Finally, some hospitals may require MSN nurses to spend some part of each day in bedside care either to maintain patient care skills, or to simply provide RNs with someone who can offer clinical leadership at the bedside.

Which MSN Specialties Involve Less Bedside Nursing?

It’s not unusual for nurse educators to do significant bedside nursing. Nurse Practitioners, Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists and Certified Nurse Midwives tend to become less involved in it. Some nurses also go for an MSN or even a DNP because their goal is to get out of direct care nursing entirely and work 100% as a teacher in an academic setting.

Is It Possible To Get Out Of Bedside Nurses Without Getting a Masters?

There are a variety of jobs where a nurse will either spend less time in bedside care, or in some cases stop doing it entirely. They include: Case Manager, Patient Advocate, Patient-Facing Clinical Nurse Educator, Preceptor and Risk Manager.

Are Nursing Salaries Better In Bedside Care Or Management Positions That Require An MSN?

Conversations with nurses and a review of key nursing forums make it clear that the answer to this question is all over the map. Some nurses report that they actually earn more doing bedside care that requires a BSN than they do educating nurses in a job that requires an MSN.

Clinical leaders are in interesting case. In hospitals that use them, getting a master’s degree may be rewarded with a small increase in salary. But there are often other ways to add points to a nurses’s clinical ladder, and some of them are far easier than getting an MSN. They can include development of a more advanced work role, continuing education or pure experienced, based on an individual hospital’s nursing ladder program.

Article Sources
AllNurses Forum, Nurse Journal, Monster.com, Mastersinnursing.com

Best Kinds of MSN Degrees For Your Nursing Career Goals

By Paul Mannet

What are the best types of masters degree in nursing? Not all MSN specializations are not all created equal. Here’s a look at the pros and cons of taking particular kinds of MSN programs, both in terms of how tough the study program is and how hard it’s likely to be to reach your personal goals in a nursing career.

nursing masters careers According to government statistics (BLS.gov), the job growth outlook for registered nurses between now and 2024 will be 16% — much higher than average for U.S. careers. Employment growth for “advanced” practice nurses such as nurse anesthetists, forensic nurse specialists, nurse educators is expected to be even greater – 31% by 2024 (BLS.gov).

List of schools offering advanced nursing degrees (Sponsored Schools):

Accelerated BSN to MSN
MS in Nursing
MS – DNP Path, Doctor of Nursing Practice
View more degree programs

MSN Nursing – Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner
Master of Science in Nursing – Informatics
Master of Science in Nursing – Leadership & Management
View more Walden degree programs

MS Nursing – Public Health
DNP Doctor of Nursing Practice
MS Nursing – Leadership Health Care Systems, Bridge Degree
MS Nursing – Nursing Education
Doctor of Nursing Practice – Educational Leadership
View more Grand Canyon degree programs

Types of Nursing Master’s Degrees By Difficulty and Benefits

Here’s our ranking of popular types MSNs, based on a look at the difficulty of finishing the degree program, the number and type of career opportunitues each can bring, and the potential salary benefits.

1) Nurse Practitioner Degrees:

Choosing a exact NP degree you want is critical, because different types of nurse practitioners do very different things. Degree types:

- Nurse Practitioner (NP)
- Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP)
- Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner
- Neonatal Nurse Practitioner
- Nurse Midwifery & Women’s Health

Nurse Anesthetist

Difficulty: High
Nurse practitioner degree programs are relatively demanding, in part because an NP has a high level of responsibility for the patient’s well-being, often without a great deal of supervision by a doctor. Clinical hours requirements tend to be higher than in some other nursing programs, which can make it hard for the student to keep up with homework, and hard to continue working even part time during parts of the degree program. For all these reasons, nurse practitioner degree programs, either online or in a campus setting, can take anywhere from 2 – 4 years to complete.

Benefits: High
Nurse practitioners are generally the highest paid specialists in the nursing profession. According to Ziprecrecruiter, the average NP today earns over $108,000. But they also enjoy some unique career benefits. They can operate their own clinics in most states (only a few states require NPs to have some level of supervision by a doctor) and they can prescribe medications. As a result, they have opportunities to view patient’s holistically and develop stronger relationships with the people they treat than typical bedside nurses.

Although NPs can earn strong salaries, there are expenses involved in their practice. In many states they’re required to buy their own professional insurance, which can cost thousands of dollars per year. Nurse anesthetist may be required to buy malpractice insurance, which is so costly it can counterbalance the high earnings potential in the specialty.

If you aspire to be a nurse anesthetist, be aware that in the long term, you will likely be required to have a doctorate degree to practice in most states. The Council on Accreditation of Nurse Anesthesia Educational Programs, has stated that any by 2022, any student accepted into an accredited Nurse Anesthesia Doctor of Nursing Practice program must earn a doctorate degree

2) Nurse Educator Degrees

Types of degrees: Masters in Nursing Education, General Master’s In Nursing

Difficulty: Moderate to High
A degree that can qualify you for a variety of management positions, but which is broadly focused on developing your ability to mentor and teach other nurses. Some nurses with this degree may move out of patient care completely to teach at nursing schools. Typically, an MSN in nursing education takes two years to complete.

Benefits: Low at first; Moderate over long run
Virtually every hospital in America has a need for nurse educators to train young RNs and LPNs in patient care procedures. That means the chances that you will find employement with a degree of this type are relatively high. The average salary they earn, according to Ziprecruiter, is just above $75,000. A key benefit of this career is that it can land you in a job where you have more regular work hours and a floor nurse. You might even get some opportunities to work from home. But the challenge is that your move into education may be a slow on. Many hospitals will expect you to continue doing regular nursing as you gradually transition into education, and it may take a long time for you to realize a significant increase in salary.

3) Nursing Leadership MSN

Difficulty: High
Although the length of MSN programs in administration and/or leadership is the same as other master’s degrees, this specialty requires you to expand your knowledge base into many areas far removed from your nursing expertise and experience. To become a nurse administrator, you need to study finance, compliance, human resources, corporate reporting and a host of other skills that may be very new and challenging to you.

Benefit: Potentially High
Nurse administrators earn an average salary of about $72,000. According to Ziprecruiter, but the highest achievers in the specialty can earn over $160,000 or even more according to the American Organization of Nurse Executives

Note: Be aware that, because nursing administration is an executive function, many employers require that you have at least five years of nursing experience, and have worked for at least a year in a management job before they’ll hire you.
Nurse leaders manage everything from staff scheduling to organization of computer records and medical data processing. Additionally, a degree in this specialty can lead to a management position in the drug industry or other type of business connected to health care. It’s one of the broader masters of arts or science in nursing degrees, and can help enable a wonderfully wide range of career possibilities.

Nursing Administration MSNs prepare you to do somewhat similar jobs to nursing leaders. For grads who choose to remain in the hospital setting, an administration or leadership to leadership degree can lead to a job as director of nursing administration, a job that’s likely to involve little direct patient care but which requires a great deal of organizational work that may include creating business plans and working to solve problems with the business managers of a hospital. The most senior position one can usually aim for this type of training is “chief nurse executive.”

4) Nursing Informatics

Difficulty: Moderate
Nursing informatics is a relatively new specialty that involves working with information systems, electronic patient records, computer interfaces for doctors and nurses and other IT and tech fields. You need to have an aptitude for working with computers, and familiarity with coding helps. If you fit that profile. informatics it can be an interesting and ever-evolving career that will take you almost completely out of direct patient care. The specialty that can provide opportunities everywhere from a part time side job entering codes for insurance coverage from a home computer to helping a large hospital create a new data management system to administer patient care, drug administration and more. The intensive growth in electronic medical records has boosted the demand for informatics specialists who can help organize information and get it into a format that’s understandable to clinicians, insurors and business people in the health field.

Benefit: High
Because data and computer systems are so important to hospitals today, the experts who know how to work on them can be well paid, According to the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, the average salary for a Nurse Informaticists was an impressive $100,717 in 2014

5) Public Health Nursing

Difficulty: Low
While the academic component of this type of degree is on a par with other nursing msn’s, there’s a key advantage in most programs. Public health masters programs often have no clinical hours requirement because this is not, strictly speaking, a direct patient care specialty.

Public health nurse specialists tend to work outside of hospitals in settings where they can affect, or in some cases run, programs that affect the community. It’s a unique specialty that can result in you working in a public health department, community center, a school, clinic or even a correctional facility. Postgrad degrees in this specialty generally include more training in social sciences than other master of arts degrees in nursing. Public health specialists also focus on coming up with ways to prevent diseases in the community, rather and only treating them after they have arisen.

Benefit: Moderate
Public health nurse salaries in the U.S. average about $62,000 per year — on the low end of what nursing master’s holders can hope to earn. But there are most subtle benefits to this specialty. Public health nurses work to solve big problems that can have a major effect on everyone. They do research and set up progams to help vulnerable populations improve their health, and may work with government officials on finding the best ways to control epidemics such as the current coronavirus outbreak. This work can provide a level of job satisfaction that’s unique in nursing.

Can You Get Your MSN Without A BSN?

A number of schools now offer “bridge” degrees that do, in fact allow an experienced RN to get a master’s degree without stopping to spend two full years in a bachelor’s program. These RN to MSN degrees can be extremely helpful to RNs who haven’t taken a nursing bachelor degree program, but who would like to find the quickest path possible to a advanced nursing.

Acceptance requirements vary a great deal from one school to another for RN to MSN Programs. Most schools offering the degree will insist that you have at least two years field experience in nursing and at least an associate’s degree. Other degree programs are designed for nurses who have a bachelor degree in an non-nursing specialty.

An RN to MSN degree can help the RN enter the same fields as any other MSN holder (These programs are also sometimes called simply “BSN to Masters in Nursing” online degrees). Career options can include becoming a nurse practitioner, nurse educator, nurse manager or nurse midwife. A very few schools also over ADN to Masters Programs online that can allow you to make the leap from an associate’s to a post grad degree without going to school for a bachelors degree in between.

Here are some nursing career and salary statistics by specialty:

Nursing Job	Median Salary	Jobs U.S.	Growth Thru 2024
Nurse Anesthetists, Nurse Practitioners & Nurse Midwives	$107,460	170,400	31%
RNs	$68,450	2,751,000	16%
LPNs and Licensed Vocational Nurses	$44,090	719,900	16%
Nursing Assistants & Orderlies	$26,590	1,545,200	17%

Sources: BLS.gov – RNs, BLS.gov – advanced care nurses , BLS.gov – LPNs, BLS.gov – nursing assistants

Requirements to Apply to Online Nursing Masters Programs

Nurses who want to move into advanced practice or nursing administration generally get a master of science in nursing (MSN) degree. To qualify for this type of postgraduate degree, you generally need to have completed an undergraduate degree in nursing or a field that relates to nursing. In some cases, it’s possible to be admitted to a master’s program in nursing if you are in the process of getting your undergrad nursing degree.

Master degree nursing programs and doctorate degrees are available in many specialties.

Learn about fast track options to nursing with direct entry MSNs.