EMT to Nurse path

[Fezman92]

I plan to eventually be a critical care nurse. Will being a critical care medic (I figure that I’ll be a critical care medic in 4-6 years at the earliest) help me with nursing school and eventually when I go to be a critical care nurse?

 

[Akulahawk]

I plan to eventually be a critical care nurse. Will being a critical care medic (I figure that I’ll be a critical care medic in 4-6 years at the earliest) help me with nursing school and eventually when I go to be a critical care nurse?

If your goal is to be a nurse, your best course of study is to go for nurse and bypass paramedic. Since you have that goal in mind, the ONLY reason you should even consider doing paramedic would be a position where being a paramedic is a prerequisite (and there aren't many of those). Those of us nurses that are or were paramedics still carry that mentality with us but unless you end up doing prehospital work as an RN, the two roles aren't going to mix all that well. In short, going medic then nurse is just going to slow you down and the money you'd spend doing medic would be better spent pursuing nursing.

I'm NOT knocking being a paramedic at all. When I became a paramedic, that's what I wanted to do as a career. I enjoyed my time as a paramedic immensely. There are some things I do miss, but had I known back then that nursing was in my future, I would have gone for it instead of doing paramedic, and I'd now be a nurse of about 20 years instead of about 6. Thankfully that's 6 years of being a nurse and not 1 year repeated 6 times...

 

[akflightmedic]

True words from @Akulahawk

If your end goal is to become a Nurse why on earth would you go a completely different path to get there?? Spend the time and money to become a nurse. Once you become a nurse, start chasing the courses which will put you on the CC RN pathway. And instead of saying "in 4-6 years I will be a CC medic", you will be saying, I have just completed my CCRN education and am now seeking a CCRN job. And once I get settled in that role, I will then explore completing or challenging (if your state allows this option) my paramedic so I can still go play on the booboo box.

I have been a paramedic since I was 19 years old. I am now 45 and a brand new RN. As an experienced medic, I wrote about this in other threads...being a medic helped me in the sense that I did not need to try that hard. Much of the foundation had already been set. However, being a medic HURT me quite a bit due to the fact that I think like a medic, I think prehospital, and many nursing faculty are not too keen on EMS providers to begin with. The classwork was VERY frustrating as it is overly simplistic in some areas and then in others it was complicated far more than it had to be. Being a medic helped me sail through clinicals because I was already comfortable talking to anyone, digging in their personal life, while I assess them head to toe. My cohorts had to develop those skills.

In short, being a medic is not going to give you all that much of an edge to become a nurse if being a nurse is your end goal.

 

[Peak]

Not really. Most healthcare professionals have a very limited understanding of the difference between EMS provider levels. From an application standpoint for school or to a critical care unit the difference is minimal and if your goal is to be a critical care nurse probably not with the time or financial investment over EMT.

If you don’t make it directly into an ED, ICU, OB, or other critical care environment the benefit of EMT versus medic is pretty trivial, let alone EMT versus critical care paramedic. The skills involved on the floor are miles away from those of the prehospital environment.

Personally I do think my time as a medic helped me to be a better ED nurse, and by extension a better nurse in the unit. However for the amount of time I spend as a medic I would have probably developed those skills in a shorter amount of time if I went straight into nursing.

From a career standpoint most nursing jobs pay based on the number of years you have been a nurse, not how many you have been in another healthcare area. Five years of nursing experience can be worth $10 an hour or more in many areas.

 

[Fezman92]

So even as a flight nurse being a medic won’t help? Also do I need a BSN?

 

[akflightmedic]

Being a medic truly has little value to your end goal considering you do not yet have that education or experience. If your end goal is Nurse, do not view paramedic as a stepping stone or way to achieve that. It is only a distractor, added cost, and not truly beneficial for your long term goal.

BSN while not required, will definitely be needed to be competitive in the flight or critical care world as a nurse.

 

[Fezman92]

It doesn’t matter where I get my RN? My community college offers both an RN and LPN-RN program and if my math is right runs roughly $20,000 total. As for the BSN, that’s something I can get after I become an RN.

 

[Peak]

The bulk of HEMS is IFTs, and in most flight programs the nurse is used to provide more ICU type care the field/ED care. Medic may earn you an advantage, but it isn't going to replace the need to critical care nursing experience.

The need for a BSN is regional, but in competative markets it can be difficult to get an acute care job, let alone critical care, without a BSN.

 

[Fezman92]

I do plan on getting my BSN but wouldn't it be cheaper to go RN to BSN?

 

[Peak]

Depends on the program. It will usually be cheaper to get a BSN from a good public university than to do one of those online RN to BSN programs.

 

[Fezman92]

I should have clarified. With an RN, I’ll have knocked out a decent amount of classes in the BSN program right? It’s basically like going to community college for my first two years to get the gen Ed classes out of the way before going to a 4 year college, which saves money. Or am I way off?

 

[akflightmedic]

It does not matter where you obtain your RN provided they are an accredited program. It would be highly unusual to se a local CC, state college or university NOT having an accredited program.

Yes, once you obtain your pre-reqs for nursing school and complete your ADN, it is usually 4 years. 2 years of pre-reqs, 2 years of core nursing.

Yes, you can wait on your BSN and do it later. As I stated there are VERY inexpensive options for BSN and to be competitive it will help. There are a ton of "for profit" ASN to BSN programs...they can cost you a TON of money. Avoid those. I found a local CC offering one very inexpensively and I qualified for federal loans for it.

Knowing these time scales and costs, you can see why trying to go medic route as a plan is really not best. There is no tremendous added value taking that pathway, only added debt, lost time, distractions.

 

[Peak]

You might save some money in a community college over a public university for the core RN classes, but most nursing programs even in community colleges have a higher rate per credit hour than most other classes.

 

[Fezman92]

You found a BSN at a community college or your ARN? Also as I said, my community college ARN costs roughly $20,000 total.

 

[akflightmedic]

You might save some money in a community college over a public university for the core RN classes, but most nursing programs even in community colleges have a higher rate per credit hour than most other classes.

I wouldn't know. All I can speak with knowledge about is both Florida and Maine. I am unsure where this poster is.

I did have the fortune of also attending the CC in Maine who brags "we have the lowest in state tuition rates".

 

[akflightmedic]

I am completing my BSN online through University of Maine. They have partnerships with the CC in the state.

 

[Fezman92]

The place I'm looking at is a community college that's 'owned' for lack of a better word by a 4 year college that has an RN to BSN program. It's a 3+1 path, 3 years at community then the last year at the main university. All in state.

 

[Peak]

I wouldn't know. All I can speak with knowledge about is both Florida and Maine. I am unsure where this poster is.

I did have the fortune of also attending the CC in Maine who brags "we have the lowest in state tuition rates".

Yeah I try to conceal that a bit, probably not as well as I would like.

A community college may have a cheaper rate, lets say for a nursing course you are looking at 250/hour instead of 350. If that only covers the first 90 or so hours then the cost difference would be $3000 assuming you only need to complete the few classes for BSN completion that you didn't get with your ADN.

Many large public universities are also more likely to have large scholarships and grants.

I paid more for my medic than my BS in biology at a public university. I paid less than 10K out of pocket for my BSN after scholarships, if it was my first degree I probably wouldn't have paid anything out of pocket.

 

[Fezman92]

I'm not sure how common this is, but the program I'm looking at has you take 6 grad credits. I'd also be saving more than the $3,000 since I have some of the gen ed classes already done from my unfinished AS in History and BS in Psychology all from the same place (sort of. My unfinished AS was at the community college that is now owned by the 4 year university where I did my unfinished BS).

 

[Carlos Danger]

If your ultimate goal is to become an ICU and/or transport nurse, then by far the most efficient route is to put paramedic school aside and start working on your BSN immediately, while continuing to work in EMS and gain field experience as an EMT. As you have discovered, there are several routes to obtaining your BSN; you'll have to investigate those to find out which way makes the most sense to you. If you already have some college, it probably makes sense to jump right into a four-year BSN program, but whether that is really the best choice for YOU depends on your personal circumstances and preferences.

Having field experience in EMS as well as current EMT certification will be a big asset when you eventually start to interview for HEMS or CCT nursing positions. Having paramedic experience isn't that big of an advantage at most places. You can always go to paramedic school later, while working as an RN and accumulating ICU experience. It depends on your state and what programs are available to you, but right or wrong, there are often shortcuts available to nurses earning their paramedic cert that aren't available to paramedics trying to earn a nursing license.