Minors With High Influence | Nurse.com

In highschool, Allison Behette, a registered nurse with a BSN, was torn between studying business and nursing. At Villanova University in suburban Philadelphia, she discovered she could do each through a 10-week summer program that allowed her to finish a minor in business without interrupting her intensive nursing studies. It wasn’t easy, said Behette, who graduated in May and works as a nurse at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C. “But it was definitely worth it,” she said. “In the current economic climate, it’s good to understand how the business world works.”

Although four-year nursing programs are traditionally considered too demanding to permit for much time for courses outside the core curriculum and university requirements, some schools report a rise in students selecting a minor to enrich their nursing studies. A secondary subject may be a science, equivalent to biology or psychology. It may be a language—Spanish, Chinese, American Sign Language—that might help a future nurse higher communicate with patients who speak other languages ​​or are hard of hearing. It may be preparation for a specialty, equivalent to nutrition, health management, computer science or public health.

“I would say it’s a great idea for a student to always have a minor, whether it’s nursing or something else,” said Thomas Dickson, director of student affairs on the University of Arizona’s School of Nursing in Tucson. Nursing advisers on the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Georgetown echoed his sentiments, saying a minor introduced students to ideas and influences outside their immediate area of ​​study, gave them a fallback in the event that they decided nursing wasn’t for them and, in some cases, improved their probabilities of finding a job or enrolling in graduate school.

New trend

“It’s kind of a ‘trendy’ thing now,” Barbra Mann Wall, RN, PhD, FAAN, assistant professor of nursing at Penn, said of the graduate program in multicultural/global health care she directs. “We’re seeing more and more students with special interests.”

About 1 / 4 of nursing students on the University of Arizona select one other major as a minor, Dickson said, and interest has increased in recent times. Public health, psychology and nutrition are the most well-liked minors, he said. The school also allows students to customize minors in areas equivalent to border health, which may include classes in justice, sociology, Chicano studies and public health.

At Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Spanish and psychology are the most well-liked majors amongst nursing students who select minors, accounting for about 20% to 25% of the nursing major’s undergraduate enrollment, said Samuel J. Aronson, MA, associate director of student academic affairs at Georgetown University’s School of Nursing & Health Studies. The third hottest selection is a certificate in international health, which has similarities to a minor but has fewer course requirements. The certificate is attractive to students who want to check or work abroad, he said.

Penn’s multicultural/global health minor is one in all 4 the college offers to nursing students, together with nutrition, health services management, and health communication. It requires six courses, three nursing and three non-nursing, that also fulfill general college or nursing requirements.

Villanova’s School of Nursing doesn’t offer minors, but about 10% to twenty% of nursing students select them anyway, in keeping with Angelina Arcamone, RN, PhD, CCE, associate dean and director of the undergraduate program at Villanova University College of Nursing. The hottest languages ​​are Spanish and psychology. Many of Behette’s classmates in Villanova’s summer business minor program selected majors with demanding course loads, equivalent to nursing and engineering, she said.

Reasons for being a minor

Students tell counselors they select minors because they’re concerned about something apart from nursing or think it is going to help them discover a job or get into graduate school. But those that need to pursue a minor to enhance their probabilities of employment after graduation could also be higher served by working in a health care setting while they’re studying, said Deborah Rowe, RN, MS, PHR, CHCR, senior director of Genesis HealthCare and past president of the National Association for Health Care Recruitment.

?The most significant thing [to potential employers]greater than a minor, is figure experience, Rowe said. Employers want graduates who’ve learned the importance of punctuality, flexibility and professionalism, she said. Employers also prefer to hire people they know, who already understand the organization and the way it really works. “It’s about building relationships,” she said.

Some graduate admissions directors have said they give the impression of being more at GPA and work experience than at whether an applicant has a minor. The University of Virginia also considers specialty certifications, involvement in skilled organizations, committee work and commitment to evidence-based practice, said Clay Hysell, MA, associate dean for admissions and financial aid on the university’s School of Nursing. “Having a minor or not has no bearing on admission to graduate programs at the University of Virginia,” he said.

Dickson said a serious is just not an alternative to work experience or good grades in nursing classes, but it may possibly make a difference in how a graduate presents himself as a job or graduate school candidate in interviews and in essays, especially if a student can relate the key to nursing practice.

Course work

The advising component is vital from the moment students enroll, nursing school advisers said. Some students and graduates who selected minors said that fitting in additional classes took lots of planning. Others said they were in a position to slot in additional classes fairly easily, especially in the event that they had already earned college credits in highschool or could use classes required for the minor to satisfy general university and nursing requirements. Students without many credits for advanced placement could have to take summer courses or an additional semester, which could make their education costlier, advisers said.

But students and graduates with minors said that selecting a second major contributed to their work and nursing studies, and sometimes created opportunities they wouldn’t have had in a nursing program. Brooke Finley, a nursing student at Arizona State, said selecting a minor in psychology connected her with faculty who were leading experts in the sector, led to volunteer work at a mental health clinic and gave her an understanding of mental illness that helped her feel comfortable working with patients with mental health issues. It also piqued her interest in psychiatric nursing, she said.

While she doesn’t understand how much it helped her get the job, Behette said she was asked about her business major in all of her interviews, and folks seemed impressed by her explanation of the way it helped her learn teamwork and delegation. She hasn’t used the key directly in her job, but she expects it to turn out to be useful in future positions or when she applies to graduate school.

Because she had Spanish as a minor at Villanova, Sarah Sheerin, RN, BSN, now a nurse within the cardiac intensive care unit at Bryn Mawr Hospital in Pennsylvania, said she was in a position to help a Cuban-born patient who had a difficult diagnosis. The woman spoke in English, but when Sheerin spoke to her in her native language, her face lit up, Sheerin said. “She said it made a big difference to her. I felt like she was more comfortable with me, like she could ask all the questions she wanted to ask.”