100% Online RN-BSN-MSN

CCNE Accreditation

5 Specializations Available

Local Clinical Completion

Transfer Up To 90 Credits

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Earn a BSN and MSN in One Program to Boost Your Career.

Enhance your passion for healing with the credentials to make an immediate and lasting impact. Sacred Heart University’s online RN-BSN-MSN program offers you a way to earn both your Bachelor of Science in Nursing and your Master of Science in Nursing at the same time. In this program, you will take several graduate courses at the undergraduate level and tuition rate. Now you can save time, money and gain a quality education that can help advance your nursing career.

The Sacred Heart University online Master of Science in Nursing is designed for you to finish your coursework at your own speed – from two years to six – to align with your schedule and provide the best balance for your life. Choose from five specializations to tailor your degree: Nursing Education, Nursing Management and Executive Leadership, Clinical Nurse Leader, Family Nurse Practitioner and Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner.

Specialize to Educate, Manage or Lead

Stand out in the job market and tailor your skills to your career goals with an MSN specialization. Whether you want to advance your bedside skills, educate the next generation or become a leader of other nurses, we have a specialization that suits you.

New Specializations Launching in Fall 2024

Sacred Heart is launching a RN-MSN FNP and RN-MSN Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner program for students with an RN.

Learn to deliver the highest quality patient care for individuals across the lifespan. This CCNE-accredited program delivers the essential knowledge you need to advance your career and prepares you to sit for the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) or American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) certification exam. You’ll graduate ready to conduct physical examinations, diagnose and treat illnesses and help your patients improve their well-being. As part of your degree, you’ll complete clinical hours to gain hands-on experience and apply your new skills in real healthcare contexts.

Get the credential you need to achieve Advanced Practice Registered Nurse licensure in psychiatric mental health. In this CCNE-accredited program, you will develop the specialized skills to manage the care of patients with diverse mental health conditions. The curriculum is also designed to prepare you for the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) or American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) certification exam. Required clinical experiences ensure you graduate with the knowledge and expertise to pursue the next step in your nursing career.

You’ve mastered patient care and working as part of a team. Advance as a leader who can inform a team about evidence-based practices, tools and processes to improve patient outcomes. Reshape policy, reduce costs and identify solutions to problems within your healthcare system after a deep immersion of quality care research within the curriculum. This unique MSN without BSN requirement degree offers four core and eight specialized courses. Complete your degree in two to six years, at your own pace, and then be prepared to sit for the American Association of Colleges of Nursing CNL Certification Exam.

Become a well-respected mentor and begin preparing new nurses to care for the patient population. With this online degree from SHU, you can transition into a teaching role, answering the call to address the growing nurse educator shortage. Among the most respected nurse educator programs, our CCNE-accredited degree features core knowledge in health care policy, practice and research plus nine specialized courses to prepare you as a nurse leader, educator and evaluator. Engage with expert faculty and work with a preceptor in two role immersions designed to apply theory to practice, and emerge ready for your CNL exam.

The nursing occupational outlook is positive, with plenty of roles for CNOs, directors of patient care and nursing administrators. Whatever your plans are, SHU’s online MSN degree in Nursing Management and Executive Leadership develops within you the sought-after skills to become an effective nurse leader who can improve processes and ultimately affect patient outcomes. Apply integrative expertise in strategic planning, quality improvement, workforce development, research and ethics, and human resource management. Courses on budgeting and process will also help you lead with expert insight in your new, advanced role. Upon graduation, enjoy a generous MSN nurse salary and an advanced education that opens doors to higher positions. You can lead a team, department or facility.

You Belong with SHU!

Our mission to prepare students for lives of professional success and personal and spiritual growth excludes no one. And it’s because of that mission — and the spirited way we live it that students of different faiths, ethnicities, and socio-economic backgrounds have made SHU the launching pad for their dreams and ambitions.

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Why Online Learning is Right for You

The advantages of online learning are obvious – you don’t have to pause your career or rearrange your life to earn the degree you need to take your career to the next level. Another key factor is fit – making sure a school feels right to you. Sacred Heart’s Center for Career & Professional Development will welcome you as if you had just walked through the door here in Fairfield. With an exclusive, online recruiting system of 10,000+ employers, one-on-one career counseling, resume workshops, and an active alumni network of more than 35,000, you can rest assured knowing that our campus reaches wherever you are.

A Curriculum with No Residency Required

In our RN-BSN-MSN curriculum’s courses, you will explore topics such as health care policy and ethics, the principles of health care research, and the underlying theories of contemporary nursing. Customize your MSN degree with a specialization, each of which concludes with a practicum you can complete near you.

Courses you may take while in our online RN-BSN-MSN program include:

Information Technology for Nursing Practice

3 Credit Hours

This course provides an introduction to information and technology needed for the practice of nursing today. It focuses on providing material to enable nurses to be computer literate by exploring the use of emerging information sources and communication technology and their impact on healthcare. Emphasis is placed on trends and issues in clinical technology. It will also examine key issues such as security and the use of databases.

The Human Journey in Nursing

3 Credit Hours

The Human Journey in Nursing utilizes the four questions posed in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition Seminars to address nursing’s role in building a just society. Concepts such as human vulnerability, resiliency, spirituality, and cultural diversity will provide the platform from which discussions about the professions and the professional nurse’s role in shaping past, current, and future healthcare will be based. Reflection on service-learning experiences will personalize and professionalize the meaning and responsibility for addressing health inequities within the workplace and the perpetuation of health disparities in society.

Quality and Safety in Practice

3 Credit Hours

During this course, you will proceed in a step-by-step progression through the continuous quality improvement (CQI) process. This approach prepares you with the necessary skills to complete a CQI capstone project in the practicum courses. You will review the historical background and theory of quality improvement and apply it to the current health care environment. After a review of the national and regulatory issues of patient safety, you will identify one issue to use in the course to apply CQI methods.

Disease Management & Outcomes Assessment

3 Credit Hours

This course is designed to introduce the Clinical Nurse Leader (CNL) to concepts directed towards maximizing patient outcomes through the management of illness and disease across the lifespan. The social, physical, psychological, and spiritual responses of the individual, family or caregiver to illness/ disease will be examined. Strategies for empowering patients and families to manage their chronic conditions will be emphasized. You will explore concepts of health promotion, illness prevention, and health maintenance of clients (individual, group, and/or community). Research on the outcomes of case and disease management is covered along with strategies for identifying and measuring outcomes of care.

Career Outlook for MSN Holders

Earning your MSN opens the door to a wide range of new opportunities, including educational, leadership and administrative positions.

Employment in healthcare occupations is projected to grow 16 percent from 2020 to 2030, much faster than the average for all occupations, adding about 2.6 million new jobs.4 This projected growth is mainly due to an aging population, leading to greater demand for healthcare services. As a result, health care organizations prefer nursing candidates with advanced credentials to fill senior roles. An MSN degree shows that you have the knowledge and critical thinking skills to handle the demands of today’s complex medical environment.

Average Annual Salaries in Nursing

  • Chief Nursing Officer $143,5025
  • Clinical Nurse Leader $125,3446
  • Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner $119,8407
  • Family Nurse Practitioner $103,8268
  • Clinical Educator $83,9489

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Sources

  1. “Occupational employment projections to 2022 | Monthly Labor Review,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved April 2021 from https://www.bls.gov.
  2. “Learn more, earn more: Education leads to higher wages, lower unemployment,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved April 2021 from https://www.bls.gov.
  3. “Online College Students | Comprehensive Data on Demand and Preferences,” The Learning House, Inc. and Asianian Market Research. Retrieved April 2021 from http://www.learninghouse.com.
  4. “Healthcare Occupations,” Occupational Outlook Handbook, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. Retrieved November 30, 2021, from https://www.bls.gov.
  5. “Average Chief Nursing Officer Salary,” Payscale. Retrieved May 2024 from https://www.payscale.com/.
  6. “Clinical Nurse Leader,” Salary.com. Retrieved May 2024 from https://www.salary.com/.
  7. “Average Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner Salary,” Payscale. Retrieved May 2024 from https://www.payscale.com/.
  8. “Average Family Nurse Practitioner Salary,” Payscale. Retrieved May 2024 from https://www.payscale.com/.
  9. “Average Nurse Educator Salary,” Payscale. Retrieved May 2024 from https://www.payscale.com/.