What is an Accelerated Nursing Degree?

You’ve been thinking about going back to school. You’re interested in going from an Associates in Nursing to a Bachelor’s in Science of Nursing, or maybe you want to start from scratch. It sounds very appealing, but the time commitment required to graduate is enough to make any part-time worker or full-time mom cringe. Why not consider getting an accelerated nursing degree? What is an accelerated nursing degree, you ask? Well, depending on your status as a student, it could be one of several things.

If you are a student who is fresh out of high school or just completed the G.E.D., your version of an accelerated nursing degree may be a fast track to a Masters in Science of Nursing, or MSN. These programs will allow a student to apply for the Undergraduate nursing program at a school. However, instead of just earning a Bachelor’s in Science of Nursing, you’ll be able to gain your Master’s in a shorter time frame than it would usually take to gain the two separately. If you are interested in getting your masters, this is an ideal track to get on, as it requires minimum time and resources spent with maximum outcome.

If you are someone who has already gained their Associates in Nursing, an accelerated nursing degree will be a program that helps you get to your Bachelors in Science of Nursing quickly. Usually, if you already have your ASN, you’ve taken some level of core general education classes. What an accelerated BSN program will do is either reduce or eliminate the amount of general education classes required for graduation based on either the assumption that you’ve had enough general education experience while getting your associates, or that the combination of the ASN and real life experience has left you sufficiently educated. Sometimes, an accelerated BSN will also be set up to better accommodate non-traditional students, allowing individuals with full time jobs to more easily complete the degree.

If you have already completed your BSN, there are also accelerated nursing degrees for people interested in a Master’s of Science in Nursing. These programs are typically geared towards professionals in the field, and some may even require you to have a certain amount of work experience to even qualify for application to the accelerated program. The reason for this is that the classes spend very little time going over the basics, and instead place emphasis on newer ideas, assuming that the students enrolled in the accelerated program have been doing the basics for long enough to not need a class on them. The accelerated MSN programs are also usually scheduled for non-traditional students, as many of the participants are professionals who are trying to get a higher degree in order to advance into managerial positions, and/or specialties with higher pay.