How to find an approved, accredited and affordable Nursing program?

It is very critical to launch your RN (Registered Nurse) career by graduating from a Nursing program from a board-approved, accredited and affordable school.  There are three important steps you must consider before you start nursing program with any school:

Step 1: Go to your state Board of Nursing (BON) web page to find an approved school for nursing program.

Step 2: Find out if the school is accredited by ACEN or CCNE.

Step 3:  Finding out graduation rate, retention rate, and net tuition of the approved school by visiting National Center for Education Statistics.

Details of following these steps including web links are explained on next page.

The following explains the outcomes of not following above mentioned three steps:

•        If you graduate from a non-approved nursing program, you will not be able to sit for RN exam administered by NCLEX. To ensure public protection, boards of nursing/regulatory bodies (BONs/RBs) require a candidate for licensure/registration to pass an exam that measures the competencies needed to perform safely and effectively as an entry-level nurse. Please refer to this site for more information: https://www.ncsbn.org/nclex.htm .All your hard earned money and precious time invested for pursuing RN program (associates or bachelors) will be a waste if you cannot get RN credential by taking and passing NCLEX exam for RN. 

•       If nursing program is not accredited by ACEN or CCNE, you will not be able to transfer your credits when you like to pursue bachelors, master or doctoral degrees in accredited nursing schools; unless the non-accredited program established articulation agreement with accredited
  school. There are lot of hospitals that will not hire you if your RN program is not accredited by ACEN or CCNE. You will obviously have competitive advantage over other candidates who graduated from non-accredited nursing program. Hospitals tend to hire RN graduated from accredited school, since they are maintaining a nationally established standards.  
•     And lastly, even if your school is approved and accredited, you must check affordability of the school by finding net tuition and fees and compare graduation rate and retention rate of your desired schools. Graduation rate is the percentage of a school's first-time, first-year undergraduate students who complete their program within 150% of the published time for the program. For example, for a four-year degree program, entering students who complete within six years are counted as graduates. Retention rate is the percentage of a school's first-time, first-year undergraduate students who continue at that school the next year. For example, a student who studies full-time in the fall semester and keeps on studying in the program in the next fall semester is counted in this rate. Why to pay more and incur unnecessary debt by attending schools with unjustified high tuition. 

 The purpose of writing this article is to provide you a comprehensive step by step guide so that you can research on your own to find the right RN program for you or someone you care for. If you follow the three steps process explained below, you will not only find an approved and accredited RN program but also save thousands of dollars on tuition and fees.

Step 1: 

First step is to find out if the school is approved by Boards of Nursing to teach nursing program. Boards of Nursing (BONs), https://www.ncsbn.org/boards.htm), are state governmental agencies that are responsible for the regulation of nursing practice. More than 100 years ago, state governments established BONs to protect the public's health and welfare by supervising and confirming the safe practice of nursing. BONs achieve this mission by outlining the standards for safe nursing care and issuing licenses to practice nursing. Once a license is issued, the board's job continues by monitoring licensees' compliance to state laws and taking action against the licenses of those nurses who have exhibited unsafe nursing practice.

Your state’ BON keeps an approved list of schools who offers nursing programs. When you browse thru this list you also need to look for schools who are on probation or provisional standing. Every state’ list is different than others. In Illinois, if graduate’s passing rate (percentage of students passing RN exam for any given year) for NCLEX falls below 75%, school receives a warning letter followed by probation and eventually lose their approval to offer RN program if they don’t improve their graduate’s passing rate. Here is the link for Illinois Board of Nursing approved schools:

http://www.idfpr.com/DPR/WHO/Schools/NurseSchools.pdf
 

Once you open the page, make sure you pay attention to following details:

·         Choose for the program that you are looking for (Associates or bachelors etc.).

·         At the end of the list (page 8), you can find schools who are on warning or probation for poor passing rate.

·         If you are unable to find detail on your chosen school’ NCLEX RN exam passing rate, please contact me via email.

All nursing programs must be approved by BON. You need to go to the site of your specific state BON site to find out the approved program. Be very careful when you google search for your board’ website. There are lot of companies websites might show on the top of the search result as they pay high amount for such outcome.  It may misguide you to non-approved and/or non accredited schools who is looking to profit only from your tuition. I have attached few state’s Boards of Nursing website. If you click these link below, it will take you to the list of schools. If you can’t find the approved school list for your state, please email me.

For New York State nursing programs click the link below:

http://www.op.nysed.gov/prof/nurse/nurseprogs-assoc.htm
 

For California State nursing programs click the link below:

http://www.rn.ca.gov/schools/rnprograms.shtml

For nursing board of Florida, click below:

http://floridasnursing.gov/nursing-education-programs-faqs/

 

Step 2: 

Once you make a list of desired schools that you want to enroll, visit following websites to find out if the RN program is accredited or not. You will always find schools may have Board’s approval without accreditation. It is very important to enroll into an accredited institution for credit transferability, up to date and higher quality program and above all broader employment opportunities.

Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing, ACEN accredits ADN/ASN/BSN programs. CCNE accredits BSN/MSN/DNP programs as well as post-bacc nurse residency programs. These are often desired/required by employers for employment and by academic institutions for further nursing education. For example, the VA, the nation’s largest employer of RNs, will only consider applicants from ACEN / CCNE programs. Many RN->BSN and MSN/DNP programs will not accept applicants from non-accredited programs.

You can search a nursing program's national accreditation status here:

http://apps.aacn.nche.edu/CCNE/reports/accprog.asp

http://www.acenursing.us/accreditedprograms/programSearch.htm

Step 3:         

Congratulations! You are at the last step to find the right program for you. As we all know that school education requires investment of your time and money. It is very important to find out the school which has reasonable tuition and also has great graduation and NCLEX passing rate. Once you make a list of schools that you are considering, you click the link below to find out each school’ net tuition, retention and graduation rate. This will help you to find out the right school that saves you thousands of dollars in debt.

http://nces.ed.gov/schoolnavigator/

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