Nursing as a career is often underrated and rarely deserves the grandiose that it should. The media is partially to blame for this – with the romanticized and unimportant portrayal of the nurse character. This may come as a surprise to non-nurses, but nursing is a complicated profession involving more than giving timely medication to in-patients.

Nurses are of many kinds; a Registered Nurse (RN) is just one such nurse. There are also Nurse Practitioners (NPs) and Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs). There are a number of such specializations and the list of abbreviations is quite long.

Along the same lines, one cannot enroll themselves in an RN degree.

Here’s what you need to know about the differences between RN and BSN degrees and how one can lead to another.

Educational qualifications
In order to become an RN, one must write and pass the NCLEX exam. This is a basic prerequisite and there’s no other way about it.

The NCLEX is where the BSN comes in. One way to be eligible to write the NCLEX exam is to have a Bachelors of Science in Nursing.

The two major differences are in time and commitment. But whichever you pick, you end up as an RN. If you started with an ADN program, but find that you need to get a BSN, there are 12-month RN-BSN degree programs available that help you with just that.

Job prospects
Being an RN without a BSN means you’ll be doing most of the typical nurse tasks we all know of – operating complex medical equipment, administering medication on time, and generally keeping the patient informed of their condition.

Having an RN-BSN degree takes this job to the next level. You can just as easily choose to do the same as an RN, or you can opt to become a public health instructor, or even become a nurse educator and help the next generation of aspiring RNs.

Whatever you pick, know that becoming an RN is the ultimate destination for an aspiring nurse. Pursuing a BSN is one of the many ways in which you can go about becoming an RN.