How Flexible Nursing Pathways Create a Stronger Healthcare System

Nursing shortages affect thousands of hospitals across the country. Not only do healthcare systems struggle to attract talent, but they also have a hard time keeping the nurses that they do get.

Despite this employment environment, nurses remain one of the most popular secondary co-leaders for people who want to pivot into a new field. For many such professionals, it’s only through flexible pathways that this is possible. In this article, we take a look at how flexible nursing pathways create a stronger workforce.

Flexible Nursing Pathways Defined

First, what do we mean by a flexible credentialing pathway? This does not mean a less stringent standard. Most of the time, it just means curricula that are designed to comfortably accommodate the widest possible number of people.

Many flexible nursing pathways, for example, reflect the often hectic schedules of parents or working professionals. They’re designed to be taken at night or online. Flexible nursing pathways make healthcare careers possible for dedicated professionals who wouldn’t otherwise be able to access them.

It’s not about making healthcare standards less stringent. It’s simply about ensuring that the credentialing process adequately reflects the needs of the many different types of candidates who might want to participate in it.

Why This Makes a Difference

Many of the people who opt in for the credentialing pathways that we will describe in this article are enthusiastic about the idea of a healthcare career. They simply can’t make traditional pathways work for them.

Accelerated online or certification-only options, all of which we’ll describe in detail later on, provide lots of different options for lots of different kinds of people.

What Options Are Available?

There are hundreds of universities across the country offering nursing classes. All of them are a little bit different in how they structure their program.

Rather than highlighting all of the possible options, we will take a broader look at different types of programs to learn more about flexible nursing school options that anyone can take advantage of.

Online Learning

Online learning is broad in the context of nursing education. This could mean a traditional bachelor’s program that simply happens to take place online. It could mean a bachelor level program that meets online and consists of pre-recorded lectures and assignments rather than live meetings.

It could also be presented in any of the other formats that we’ll describe later on. Online learning is optimal for many people because it saves time on the commute, it often provides savings on the price of tuition, and as mentioned earlier, it can even offer some flexibility in how the work gets completed.

It is important to understand that online nursing programs will involve in-person requirements, particularly in the form of clinical rotations. If you are interested in getting an online nursing degree, make sure that the programs you look into are able to cooperate with hospitals in your area.

Accelerated and Certification-Only Nursing Programs

Accelerated Nursing Programs are optimal for people who have already earned a bachelor’s degree and now want to pivot into a new career path. These rapid learning modules allow you to earn your certification in 12-18 months.

This works because, generally speaking, the nursing-specific element of a 4-year college curriculum consists of about 30-40 credit hours, which is the equivalent of around 3 fall semesters. However, the truncated format is still incredibly time-consuming and generally requires an almost full-time level of commitment.

If you are interested in becoming a nurse as quickly as possible and are able to withstand a year of discomfort to get where you want to be, this is a great option to consider.

Certification-only pathways are in a similar vein to that of the accelerated route, but the format itself is a little more flexible in terms of timeline completion. In this scenario, you basically just take nursing-specific courses at your own pace.

You can do one or two a semester if that’s the time frame you’re interested in. This is a good option for people who are still working a full-time job or handling parental responsibilities.

Direct-to-Hire Programs

Direct-to-hire programs offer nurses the opportunity to get an RN license and an MSN, (that’s a master’s degree) in about three years. This is about half the amount of time it would take to wind up with a master’s degree in nursing, starting as an undergraduate.

This route is optimal for people who are pivoting into nursing as a second career and don’t necessarily want to start at the bottom. It is time-consuming, it is expensive, but it’s also an investment that will pay for itself in the long run.

MSN recipients can work in advanced practice settings, earning six-figure salaries almost right out the gate.

Associates Programs

It’s also worth mentioning that there are associate-level programs that provide a quicker path toward healthcare careers. Associate’s nursing degrees can be completed in two years.

While they don’t result in as comprehensive a range of responsibilities as BSN recipients, it is a good starting point, particularly for people who are not entirely sure that they want to follow through with a nursing career.

They are also a solid option for those who may benefit from completing a BSN later on with employer-provided tuition assistance.

Conclusion

Flexible nursing pathways make healthcare more accessible. As you can see, flexible nursing pathways are not at all about making the credentialing process easier.

In many cases, they’re actually more difficult. The key is to give people options. There are lots of great potential candidates out there.

They shouldn’t be turned away simply because their circumstances aren’t conducive to a traditional credentialing program.