What are the educational pathways to becoming a Registered Nurse?
On the job training and experience are hard to quantify and verify. A person can have 10 years of experience and learn little from that experience — making the same mistakes that they made in year 3 and practicing with the same level of sophistication. With people’s lives on the line, employers (and the public) want RN’s to be formally educated and have the proper credentials to assure that the nurse has at least gotten the minimal education appropriate for the job. Would you want someone doing brain surgery on someone you loved who said, “No, I never went to school to learn this, but I’ve seen it a lot of times and I think I can do a pretty good job.” No, you would want someone with formal education and proper credentials. Also, higher level jobs require knowledge and skills that are not a part of lower level jobs. So, as you are getting experience in a lower level job, you are developing expertise in the skills of that lower level job — NOT developing skills that are not needed in
