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"I was definitely impressed and the class was the brightest group of people I've ever been associated with," Hampton said.

In addition to UCSF, similar programs also are offered at Samuel Merritt College/St. Mary's College, San Francisco State University and the University of San Francisco in Northern California and at the Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science at the University of San Diego.

Nationwide, 33 nursing schools have launched entry-level-to-master's programs and the trend pioneered by Yale University is gaining momentum, according to a survey by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.

K. Sue Hoyt, Ph.D.(c), RN, is the MEPN coordinator at San Diego, which started the program last year in response to an obvious need. "The community was asking for a program like this," Hoyt said, adding that about 1,300 inquiries poured in from people with degrees.

The 28 people accepted into the program will finish their first year in May. They'll return in September in one of three tracks-nurse practitioner, health and care systems administration or clinical nurse specialist.

"We did a feasibility study that showed there truly was a need for this program in the community," Hoyt said. "Also, if someone wants to enter nursing who already has a degree, this program offers the best way to achieve their goals as quickly as possible."

Yale pioneered the concept of accepting non-nursing students in 1974 with an initial enrollment of a dozen students, a number that has steadily increased. The latest class of 66 students started in August and is undergoing an intensive first 11 months of preparations in basic nursing skills and background sciences designed to prepare the students for advanced practice roles. They then will be able to take the NCLEX exams and work part time to gain experience while finishing the three-year program.

"It was a really heretical idea and the major nursing groups were quite threatened by the idea that people with no background in institutional nursing could get an education and go straight into advanced practice, but the program was successful and really took off," said Margaret Beal, Ph.D., MSN, a certified nurse-midwife and Yale's program director for the graduate entry prespecialty in nursing option.

While most GEPN candidates have been students with other degrees who decide to pursue nursing, people from other professions also have joined the program, such as a banker who became a family nurse practitioner and carries a heavy caseload of HIV-positive patients, and an anthropology professor who decided to become a professional midwife and now runs a private practice in the Pacific Northwest.

"What distinguishes Yale is that we really tailor the curriculum to dovetail well with student goals and to thoroughly prepare them for actual advanced practice nursing roles," Beal said.

Taking off

With the successes at Yale, UCSF and other schools that have had programs for some time, other nursing departments are considering offering some form of MSN for people with non-nursing degrees. Many nursing schools recently started programs and at least 17 have such plans on their agendas, according to the AACN.

At DePaul University in Chicago, the nursing program received approval in April 2001 to start a master of science in generalist nursing for students who already have BA/BS degrees in other fields. While starting with just a few students who were already interested in such a program, the last class enrollment was 24 and interest is high.

"The program has grown dramatically in popularity since the word got out," said Susan Poslusny, Ph.D., RN, chair of the nursing department at DePaul. "The students are wonderful. They're very bright and accomplished learners who have a broad background in other areas that enriches the educational experience for all of the students as well as the faculty."

The two-year program has some prerequisites such as organic chemistry, a year of biology and some allied field requirements such as psychology, basic statistics and economics. The curriculum contains 830 clinical hours and prepares students to become licensed RNs with a master's degree. If they then want to specialize to become a nurse practitioner, nurse anesthesiologist, midwife or health administrator, they can return and complete a post-master's in the field.