Are you starting to apply to nursing schools?

Looking for nursing programs to get your nursing degree can be a stressful task.  Whether you are high school student looking to become a licensed practical nurse or a registered nurse or an RN looking to do advanced practice nursing as a nurse practitioner, you will have to deal with the nursing school transcript process.

As a side note, remember to verify that the nursing programs that you are applying to are accredited nursing schools.  To learn more about this issue, please visit our post about accredited nursing schools.

If you are looking to start your nursing career or just advance it, you will need to have transcripts sent for your previous schools and jump through the application hoops.  It can be time consuming and costly with application fees.

Dealing with nursing school transcripts may be getting a bit easier.

There is a new trend happening at nursing schools as they are beginning to offer unofficial transcript evaluations.  But before we get into that, I suppose we should talk a little bit about what transcripts are.

What is contained in a transcript?

In short, a nursing school transcript contains your academic career record from your High School and/or college or university.  It will itemize all sorts of information.  The primary elements are as follows:

• Name of Student,
• Previous Schools Names, Addresses, and Phone Numbers
• List of Courses You Took – Usually by Year
• Dual Enrollment and/ or Any Honors – As Applicable
• Your Class Grades (either letter or numeric)
• Total GPA [Grade Point Average]
• Number of Credits Taken/ Achieved Per Semester & Year
• Grade Scale Used by That School
• Any State Proficiency Exams [if any]
• Graduation Date and Degrees Achieved

So as you see, there is quite a bit of information that each school keeps record of and includes in your transcripts.  You will most likely need a transcript from each school that you have graduated from, or at least partially attended and what classes you had learning experiences.

Unofficial vs Official Transcript

There are a couple of types of transcripts that you can order from each school.  Usually there is a resource center at each university and sometimes a location online from where you can order your transcripts.

The official transcript is the type that each program to which you are applying will need from you.  An official transcript is sealed in an envelope by the originating school to prevent tampering.  You can request the official transcript be sent directly to the nursing programs to which you are applying (and some require that) or to your home so that you can package everything together and send off as one unit to avoid missing information later down the line.

An unofficial transcript is all of the same information that is in an official transcript but it is not sealed.  You can order these, and in fact can sometimes print right from the school’s website for your records.

At many Nursing Schools you can now ask for an unofficial or an official evaluation.

An unofficial evaluation is helpful, as some offer this service prior to submitting a full application- thus it gives you a better ideas as to what your chances of acceptance are, and what deficiencies you may need to correct prior to a full submittion.  This unofficial evaluation can give you time to take additional classes, or retake classes with less than desirable grades while you are getting an official evaluation submittal compiled and therefore you will be saving some time.  Most nursing schools are doing unofficial transcript evaluations in less than 24 hours.

Be certain to keep back-up copies of your official unopened transcripts.

You should order and have several copies of official unopened transcripts from all of your schools in a file at home to be ready to send to the nursing school programs to which you are applying.  This is just in case they somehow get misplaced at the intended school, or get lost in the mail from your previous school.  Unfortunately this happens quite often and if you have spare copies of the official unopened transcripts at home, you can provide them right away instead of waiting the weeks it can take to get new ones sent from the originating school.

How to get your School Transcripts

Are looking to advance your nursing career path but are wondering which path to take- nurse practitioner or physician assistant?

Well, in this post we are going to do a comparison of the two job descriptions and the educational requirements for achieving both.  Let’s take a look shall we?

The thing about being a Nurse Practitioner or a Physician Assistant is that at first glance they seem very similar and thus it can be difficult to make choice for your nursing career.  But as we look closer at the two, we see some significant differences that should be considered when making your choice to be either a Nurse Practitioner or a Physician Assistant.

Let’s start talking about how similar these two career paths are.

As a Nurse Practitioner, or a Physician Assistant, you will have the availability to work closely with and care for your patients.  You will prepare medical histories, examine the patients and develop care plans for them.

As a Nurse Practitioner, or a Physician Assistant you will be able to diagnose and treat your patients, however this is where the differences start to show.  A Nurse Practitioner can do this unsupervised, where as a Physician Assistant needs to have a doctor to oversee their efforts.  Now, the level of supervision varies from doctor to doctor and their comfort with the PAs experience, level of education, and skills in their particular specialty.

Both Can Prescribe Medication For Their Patients

However, here again the Physician Assistant usually is supervised by a doctor where an NP does not require the supervision.

Also, there are some medicines that a PA can not prescribe such as narcotics and because they are licensed by the state, there may be other medications that the particular states restricts.

Education Can Vary Slightly

To be a Nursing Practitioner you need to be a registered nurse and obtain a Master’s degree.  Some states require a MS in Nursing, but in others it just has to be a Master’s and preferably related to the healthcare field.  You will also need to take care to get additional clinical experience.

A Physician Assistant also need to get an advanced degree, along with a qualified background experience in nursing, paramedic training or equivalent emergency medical services.  The PA will go for a Masters of Science in Physician Assistance and then apply for a PA license.  You must pass the Physician Assistant National Certifying Examination (PANCE) in order to achieve your license.

What about Salary?

Again these to career paths are similar.  All of the statistics that I have seen state that the average pay for both a Nurse Practitioner and a Physician Assistant are around $70,000-85,000 a year with an average work week of about 35 hours.  With this kind of pay and hours it makes sense why there are so many nurses that are pursuing advanced education!

So, to sum it up:  the tasks and daily efforts of the Nurse Practitioner and the Physician Assistant are very similar.  The biggest difference I see is the autonomy that the NP gets vs. the PA.  The Nurse Practitioner may have their own clinic or practice (in some states) and the Physician Assistant requires the supervision of a doctor (hence the PA title).

What differences impact in the Nurse Practitioner vs. Physician Assistant choice?

We have touched on advanced nursing degrees in other posts like Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing Equals More Money and Education For Nurses.  But due to the recent activity that we are sing at hospitals all over the United States, we need to focus on nursing education criteria that is quietly being enforced in the current health care environment.

Many heath care facilities are attempting to obtain Magnet status, a certification from the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC).  Having more nurses with advanced degrees like the BSN- bachelor’s of Science in Nursing, will help them attain this coveted status.

Then, there is the “BSN in 10″ bills that are in New Jersey and New York awaiting legislation.

These bills are promoting the requirement that registered nurses being hired must have at minimum a BSN nursing education or be enrolled within two years of their hiring into a nursing program seeking this nursing degree.

The requisite stems from the distinct evidence that the critical thinking skills gained from BSN or MSN nursing education degree programs are more suited to the current healthcare needs of the ever increasing complexity of the health system.

Evidence shows that hospitals with more nurses educated at or above the BSN level have lower death rates.

Now as with all statistics you have to consider- what facilities have over 70 percent of their nursing staff with advanced nursing education?  Perhaps their area of concentration is not a high death probability.  But regardless of this fact- it is the number that the health care system is using.

Thus, we are seeing hospitals and other facilities looking to increase nurse education so they provide full or partial tuition payments and even time off for registered nurses to go back to a nursing school and obtain their BSN.

Clearly this nurse education an increasingly important issue for healthcare providers or they wouldn’t be offering such incentives!

So if you are a registered nurse with just an associates degree, then you should really consider obtaining information on BSN nursing degree programs. Some nursing courses in a higher education program will help advance nursing careers, and you can find online nursing programs that take a little less contact hours in a physical classroom.