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:
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:
For California State nursing programs click the link below:
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
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.
If you find this article helpful or have any question please
email me and like our Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/guidetocareereducation1. We are a not for profit organization with a mission to help students to pursue their career goal with no debt. Each like will help us to raise fund and reach our mission. Thank you for reading.
