Prerequisites and Requirements for Accelerated Nursing Degrees

Key Infor­ma­tion:

• Can­di­dates may need to com­plete spe­cif­ic sci­ence cours­es such as biol­o­gy, chem­istry, and anato­my before apply­ing for a nurs­ing degree.
• Gen­er­al require­ments may include at least a 3.0 GPA and a sat­is­fac­to­ry score on the Test of Essen­tial Aca­d­e­m­ic Skills (TEAS Exam Nursing).
• A bach­e­lor’s in biol­o­gy, psy­chol­o­gy or pub­lic health are com­mon non-nurs­ing bach­e­lor’s before tran­si­tion­ing to a nurs­ing degree.

If you’ve already com­plet­ed a bachelor’s degree but you want to tran­si­tion into a nurs­ing career, accel­er­at­ed nurs­ing degrees are the way to go. Often, in as lit­tle as one to 1.5 years, you can com­plete the Bach­e­lor of Nurs­ing Sci­ence (BSN) require­ments and be eli­gi­ble to sit for the NCLEX-RN exam to become a Reg­is­tered Nurse. But how can you com­plete the pro­gram so quickly?

On the one hand, accel­er­at­ed bachelor’s in nurs­ing pro­grams are fast-paced and intense. It’s a lot of work! But the real mag­ic is in the use of your pre­vi­ous cred­its. Since you’ve already com­plet­ed the gen­er­al edu­ca­tion require­ments for your exist­ing degree, those cred­its can apply toward your BSN. That means you only have to wor­ry about fin­ish­ing the nurs­ing require­ments to get your sec­ond degree, thus the 18-month time­line (ver­sus a four-year time­line for a tra­di­tion­al BSN).

Apart from the trun­cat­ed time­line, an accel­er­at­ed BSN is the same as a tra­di­tion­al one. You’ll take the same class­es in the same sequence and must accrue the same num­ber of clin­i­cal hours. You sim­ply save time by not hav­ing to take gen­er­al edu­ca­tion class­es again!

Relat­ed:

• Top Schol­ar­ships for Nurs­ing Students
• Most Afford­able Bachelor’s in Nursing
• Best Bachelor’s in Nursing
• Fast-Track Nurs­ing Degrees for Work­ing Health­care Professionals
• Best Online Bach­e­lors of Nurs­ing Programs

General Prerequisites for Accelerated Nursing Programs

The nurs­ing school require­ments for accel­er­at­ed pro­grams vary from one school to the next. How­ev­er, the fol­low­ing gen­er­al require­ments are pret­ty standard:

• Have a bachelor’s degree (in any field) from an accred­it­ed col­lege or university
• Meet min­i­mum GPA require­ments (e.g., 3.0 cumu­la­tive under­grad­u­ate GPA)
• Com­plete pre­req­ui­site sci­ence cours­es (e.g., Biol­o­gy I, Micro­bi­ol­o­gy, Human Anato­my, Human Phys­i­ol­o­gy, Inor­gan­ic Chem­istry, Organ­ic Chem­istry, Sta­tis­tics) if you haven’t already
• Com­plete non-sci­ence pre­req­ui­site cours­es (e.g., Sta­tis­tics, Oral Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Writ­ten Com­mu­ni­ca­tion) if you haven’t already
• Have a sat­is­fac­to­ry score on the Test of Essen­tial Aca­d­e­m­ic Skills (TEAS Exam Nurs­ing), which is usu­al­ly at least a 70%

The num­ber and type of nurs­ing pre­req­ui­sites you must com­plete large­ly depend upon your first bachelor’s degree. If you majored in his­to­ry, you’ll have a lot of sci­ence pre­req­ui­sites to do. But if you majored in chem­istry, you will nat­u­ral­ly have few­er pre­req­ui­site courses.

Common Bachelor’s Degrees Completed Before Accelerated Nursing Programs

Though you can start an accel­er­at­ed BSN pro­gram with any oth­er bachelor’s degree, some are much more com­mon than oth­ers. The degrees list­ed below are among the most com­mon for non-nurs­ing degree to BSN stu­dents. Also list­ed below are a few ben­e­fits these degrees pro­vide you as you pur­sue a nurs­ing education:

Application Process

Before tak­ing nurs­ing degree cours­es, you must apply and be accept­ed to a pro­gram. The appli­ca­tion process varies some­what from one pro­gram to the next, but gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, you should be pre­pared to com­plete the fol­low­ing steps:

• Fill out an appli­ca­tion form for your desired accel­er­at­ed BSN pro­gram and pay the appli­ca­tion fee.
• Sub­mit offi­cial tran­scripts show­ing that you have a bachelor’s degree in anoth­er field and that you meet GPA require­ments for admission.
• Sub­mit a let­ter of intent in which you explain who you are, why you want to become a nurse, and your plan for being suc­cess­ful in the accel­er­at­ed program.
• Pro­vide a cur­rent resume out­lin­ing any rel­e­vant pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ence, hard skills, or soft skills
• Pro­vide let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion (usu­al­ly three) that speak to your aca­d­e­m­ic and pro­fes­sion­al capabilities

Of the appli­ca­tion mate­ri­als list­ed above, two of the most impor­tant are your per­son­al state­ment and the let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion writ­ten on your behalf. On the one hand, a per­son­al state­ment is your oppor­tu­ni­ty to sell your­self, your skills, and your abil­i­ties. It enables you to dif­fer­en­ti­ate your­self from oth­er appli­cants by telling a sto­ry about your­self that piques the admis­sions com­mit­tee’s interest.

On the oth­er hand, let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion shed light on what oth­ers per­ceive of you in aca­d­e­m­ic and pro­fes­sion­al realms. These let­ters give cre­dence to what you say about your­self in your per­son­al state­ment because they should be writ­ten by peo­ple with inti­mate knowl­edge of your capabilities.

Some — but not all — fast-track nurs­ing pro­grams also require appli­cants to par­tic­i­pate in a per­son­al inter­view. These inter­views might be con­duct­ed in per­son or online and serve to help admis­sions com­mit­tees quick­ly gauge if you’re a good fit for their accel­er­at­ed BSN programs.

Curriculum and Coursework

Most accel­er­at­ed online nurs­ing pro­grams and tra­di­tion­al on-cam­pus accel­er­at­ed BSN pro­grams have very sim­i­lar cur­ric­u­la, includ­ing a sequence of course­work and spe­cif­ic clin­i­cal requirements.

Regard­ing course­work, much of your stud­ies revolve around nurs­ing prac­tice and oth­er pro­fes­sion­al issues. Com­mon cours­es might include, but are not lim­it­ed to, the following:

These and oth­er cours­es give you the aca­d­e­m­ic knowl­edge nec­es­sary to be a com­pe­tent nurse. You will apply that knowl­edge and gain addi­tion­al skills dur­ing the clin­i­cal expe­ri­ence nurs­ing por­tion of the program.

The spe­cif­ic num­ber of clin­i­cal hours you must com­plete depends on the pro­gram. Most pro­grams align their clin­i­cal require­ments with the licen­sure require­ments in their state, which tends to be in the 700–800 hours. Some pro­grams require far less; oth­ers require far more.

You’ll accu­mu­late hours over mul­ti­ple clin­i­cal expe­ri­ences through­out the accel­er­at­ed pro­gram. Your clin­i­cal rota­tions expose you to work­ing in many dif­fer­ent roles and set­tings. Com­mon rota­tions include the following:

• Acute care
• Pedi­atrics
• Med­ical-sur­gi­cal
• Com­mu­ni­ty health
• Long-term care
• Labor and delivery
• Psy­chi­atric settings

Clin­i­cals typ­i­cal­ly involve work­ing six, eight, or twelve-hour shifts a few days a week. How­ev­er, giv­en the short­er time­frame, the accel­er­at­ed BSN for­mat usu­al­ly requires you to work more shifts in a giv­en week than a tra­di­tion­al program.

As a result of com­plet­ing course­work, labs, and clin­i­cals, you’re expect­ed to emerge from your accel­er­at­ed BSN pro­gram ready for any num­ber of nurs­ing and health­care careers. Like­wise, with the com­pe­ten­cies* below, you’ll be pre­pared to seek nurs­ing licensure:

*Accord­ing to the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Col­leges of Nurs­ing. This is a par­tial list of rec­om­mend­ed competencies.

Licensing and Certification

Com­plet­ing your degree is just one step in the process of seek­ing nurs­ing career oppor­tu­ni­ties. You must also obtain nurs­ing licen­sure to prac­tice in your state. One of the first steps in doing so is to take the Nation­al Coun­cil Licen­sure Exam­i­na­tion for Reg­is­tered Nurs­es, or NCLEX-RN.

Accord­ing to the Nation­al Coun­cil of State Boards of Nurs­ing (NCSBN), this com­put­er-based, adap­tive test includes ques­tions on a num­ber of areas, includ­ing the fol­low­ing, which are ordered based on the per­cent­age of total ques­tions on the test:

• Safe and Effec­tive Care Environment 
  • Man­age­ment of Care
  • Safe­ty and Infec­tion Control
• Health Pro­mo­tion and Maintenance
• Psy­choso­cial Integrity
• Phys­i­o­log­i­cal Integrity 
  • Basic Care and Comfort
  • Phar­ma­co­log­i­cal and Par­enter­al Therapies
  • Reduc­tion of Risk Potential
  • Phys­i­o­log­i­cal Adaptation

Remem­ber that the require­ments for licen­sure as an RN vary from one state to the next. Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, you must grad­u­ate from a board-approved pro­gram, pass the NCLEX-RN, and sub­mit an appli­ca­tion, fees, fin­ger­print cards, and oth­er nec­es­sary doc­u­men­ta­tion. You can access each state’s licens­ing require­ments by vis­it­ing the NCSBN website. 

Then, to main­tain your RN license, you must com­plete con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion require­ments as out­lined by your state’s board. These require­ments vary from state to state but typ­i­cal­ly involve around 30 hours of con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion every two years.