How Long is Nursing School and Does it Differ Depending on Program?

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Nursing school like any other school program takes exactly as long as the individual needs to complete the requisite units required for graduation. Typically, this is three years, but it can be as fast as one year and as long as eight years. There is some limit to how long it can take to get a Nursing degree due to the fact that nursing is a competitive educational program and spots aren’t held for people who are under achieving.

How Long is Nursing School?

Students can typically begin practicing nursing following a one-year Licensed Vocational Nursing program. You will be doing menial nursing tasks such as daily patient care in hospitals and residential care facilities or home health nursing. This one-year program covers basic patient care like cleaning patients, assisting to their needs during recovery and taking vital signs.

The Nursing degree that most of us think of that allows a nurse to work in more settings including doctors’ offices, hospitals and other patient care centers is typically a four year program with either a prior or concurrent baccalaureate. These nurses graduate with an education that is more rounded and with more training, which enables them to complete tasks like taking blood and other samples, administering medication as ordered by doctors or Physicians Assistants, and administering intubation.

There are Associate Degree in Nursing (ADN). These are typically offered at community colleges and take about two years, sometimes three. An ADN is similar to an LVN and does not have the training to do medical procedures, but does have a degree unlike someone who completed the vocational training required for an LVN. Most of the time, ADN students are using this degree as a stepping-stone to a Registered Nursing program, which can be quite competitive.

Pay Scale and Schooling

The length of nursing school will also be a matter of payment expectations. For higher paying positions such as Charge nurse or Administrative positions, a Master’s Level degree is needed. This is to train the nursing candidate in all functions of nursing that they may be required to oversee and participate in. A Master’s Degree in Nursing can take up to eight years, but often can be done in six, if all education is done concurrently without the need to work outside jobs. Also, it would be very hard to do, as a non-traditional student in six years time. The need of a non-traditional student being typically influenced by work and family and economic need.

A Master’s degree is a coveted on because the pay scale as an MSN is so much higher. Also, you can specialize in a specific area; therefore, you will be doing mostly what you want and working with the population you want to. Many nurses go back to school after working for a few years as an RN to get their MSN in order to climb in pay grade and to change their job by adding to their education and abilities.

Nursing is one of the few fields that one can start off working with a year’s worth of training, but continue to train and gain education at the student’s own pace in order to improve and change.