MSN Degree Requirements

The MSN admission process usually incorporates a certain number of undergraduate course requirements in order to bring the RN to MSN students into compliance with the requirements for completion of a master’s degree.  In most cases the courses taken during an associate’s degree in nursing program transfer over to meet those requirements.   In some cases there are courses in mathematics and increasingly, in informatics that may have to be made up along the way by students who are entering an MSN program without a baccalaureate.

Core Courses/Prerequisites

A sample of the prerequisite/core courses for nurses:

• Introductory Statistics (including inferential and descriptive)
• Anatomy and Physiology I and II (with labs)
• Lifespan Developmental Psychology
• Microbiology (with lab)

Requirements for non-nurse entrants to an MSN program might include these courses:

• Anatomy Lecture and Lab
• Physiology Lecture and Lab
• Microbiology Lecture and Lab
• General or Introduction to Psychology
• Elementary Statistics
• Nutrition
• Introduction to Sociology or Cultural Anthropology
• Oral Communication or Public Speaking
• Developmental or Lifespan Psychology

Requirements for the MSN Specializations

There are numerous medical specializations that an MSN graduate can land in, but completing the MSN program prior to further specialization requires selecting one of three or four principal choices.  Students may opt for the Nurse Practitioner track, the Nurse Educator field, the Clinical Nurse Specialist area or the Nurse Administrator track.  These choices are offered under various titles at different schools but they are the basic “majors” in an MSN program.

Nurse Practitioner programs generally require forty to forty seven semester credits which usually require two full school years plus two summers.  The clinical hours, or practicum, are partially but not wholly built into these hours.  The curriculum may vary based on the choice of Adult Nurse Practitioner, Family Nurse Practitioner, or Pediatric Nurse Practitioner.

Clinical Nurse Specialist students select a population (geriatrics, pediatrics, etc.) and a clinical area (acute care, surgery, emergency care) in which to specialize.  Those selections dictate the curriculum requirements, but they will add up to forty five to forty seven clinical hours.  There are practicum hours folded into the advanced practice component segments of the curriculum.

Nurse Educator programs usually are about forty five credit hours, although occasionally a program will add an additional fifteen credits for the practicum, usually about 300 hours in the field.  In this field the clinical work is teaching – student teaching, so to speak – in facilities where nursing and health education are the topic.

Nurse Administrator graduate programs may emulate one or more of the joint MSN degrees by incorporating business courses into the curriculum.  The program at Penn draws on the business school for some of its courses, but wraps the entire course of study into an MSN with focus in Healthcare Administration.  This program can take less than two years if done on a fulltime basis.