School of Nursing

Direct Entry Nursing (MS)

Overview | Curriculum | Experiential Learning

Application due 1/15

Overview

Northeastern's direct entry nursing program allows you to use the degree and experience that you already have and leverage it into a master's degree in Nursing. You will earn a BSN.

Since you will start the direct entry nursing program with a bachelor's degree, you will have taken most of the courses you need to begin a study of health and nursing. Assuming you have met the prerequisites, you will not need to repeat any of your undergraduate course work. You come into the direct entry program as a graduate student and are regarded as such, even when you take the undergraduate nursing classes during your first year and a half.

For prerequisites and more detailed information, see Frequently Asked Questions.

Curriculum

Sixteen months of nursing-specific classes (including practica) position you to sit for the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX). After passing the NCLEX, you become a registered nurse and practice in the field for six to nine months in a full-time cooperative experience, and then continue in the graduate program in nursing in a specialty of your choosing. You earn credit for the cooperative experience, allowing you to retain your student status for loan and insurance purposes

Read the curriculum.

Experiential Learning

By the time you graduate from Northeastern, you will have worked with a tremendous variety of cases and patients at some of the world's foremost centers for health treatment and research, including:

• Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center
• Boston Medical Center
• Boston Neighborhood Health Centers
• Brigham and Women's Hospital
• Children's Hospital Boston
• Harvard Vanguard Health Care
• Massachusetts General Hospital
• Tufts Medical Center
• Veterans' Administration Healthcare System
• Visiting Nurse Association of Boston

You will gain exposure to primary care, surgery, pediatrics, geriatrics, oncology, cardiothoracic care, and more. The practica are intended to give you a broad overview and show you how to approach patient care from a health perspective.

Northeastern is renowned for its co-op program, which combines classroom learning with field experience to give students a fully rounded education. The Bouvé College of Health Sciences has an extensive network of clinical affiliations that we draw on to create cooperative experiences at health centers, major teaching hospitals, and community hospitals. We have agreements with these institutions that our direct entry students who engage in a practicum at a given health center can continue there for their master's cooperative experiences. Within any one hospital you will work at different departments, giving you exposure to different specialties and types of patients.

After taking two semesters of research design and methods, you complete a research practicum, usually in your final year. The practicum involves completing forty hours of work as an assistant to leading nurse researchers in the New England area on a clinically relevant topic that interests you. Many of the major teaching hospitals in Boston have invited our students to work with them, or you may work with faculty in the School of Nursing or other specialties within the Bouvé College of Health Sciences.

Some students participate in poster presentations as part of their research practicum. Others may complete an original research thesis that they can publish and present.

Some examples of student research include:

• Alzheimer Patients and Their Caregivers
• Behavioral Risk-factors in Adolescents in the Dominican Republic and in the U.S.
• Children's Beliefs about Violence
• Lesbian Women's Health Project
• Psychosocial Predictions of Negative Outcomes of Pregnancy in Low-income
• Women School-age
• Children's Perceptions about their PICU Hospitalizations

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Contact Info

Janet Briand-McGowan, Program Coordinator
407 Robinson Hall
Tel: 617.373.7330
j.briand-mcgowan@neu.edu