Master degree in nursing

Question:

I have a non-nursing bachelor's degree. I have a variety of options for applying to generic masters programs or to accelerated BSN programs.
According to some school literature I have here, it says that many nurse managers prefer their employees to have earned a baccalaureate degree in nursing in addition to a master's degree. How true is this, in your experience?

Answer:

What is your goal? What do you plan on doing with your degree?
I don't understand why nurse managers would prefer their employees to have earned a master's degree at all. If you're referring to working as a nurse, you'll need the knowledge of some sort of nursing program.
That quote as written doesn't make sense. Perhaps what many nurse managers are looking for is experience as a working nurse before getting the master's degree? I am in a regular BSN program at the moment, having a previous B.Sc. (Bronze Swimming Certificate) from long ago in an unrelated field. Many of my instructors and some nurses I meet say that it is necessary to work as a hospital floor nurse for a year or two before going on to graduate school, in order to get experience actually dealing with sick people. I don't know whether this is actually necessary or just something that they say out of habit. I do know that experience is a great teacher for some, but that some people never seem to learn anything no matter how much experience they accumulate. I don't imagine that a one size fits all approach really works for nursing education.
I have a non-nursing bachelor's degree. I have a variety of options for applying to generic masters programs or to accelerated BSN programs. According to some school literature I have here, it says that many nurse managers prefer their employees to have earned a baccalaureate degree in nursing in addition to a master's degree. How true is this, in your experience?

Could you clarify what kind of generic programs you are referring to? The truly generic masters' programs I am aware of award a master's degree, but without an area of specialization--basically the equivalent of going through an accelerated BSN program, but you come out with a Masters degree, but one that doesn't prepare you for advanced clinical practice. I didn't think there were very many of those around at this point. But there are quite a few programs for people with non-nursing Bachelor's degrees that award a master's with a clinical specialization (e.g., as a family nurse practitioner, or a pediatric nurse practitioner).

You'll hear many arguments back and forth as to whether having a non-nurse go through a 3-year program and come out as an NP or a clinical nurse specialist is a good idea or not. There have been programs like these around for a long time, although their numbers have increased greatly in the past few years. Some of them encourage graduates to work at least a year as a staff nurse after graduation before working in an advanced practice role. As far as I know, there aren’t a lot of data to show whether graduates of these kinds of programs perform better or worse than advanced practice nurses who have gone through the traditional route.