Speaker 1: Hey everyone, welcome or welcome back to my channel. Thank you so much for clicking on this video. If you're new to my channel, my name is Melissa and I'm a nursing student. I also have a master's degree in healthcare administration or an MHA for short and this video is going to be detailing what it was like for me to go through an MHA program and get my master's in healthcare administration. So if you have not seen my previous videos, then you may or may not know that I am currently a full-time nursing student. I attend Chamberlain University and I'm obtaining my BSN, which is a bachelor's in nursing. Most people will go to school and get their bachelor's degree as their first degree, sometimes even their second if they want to do a career change. This is actually my third degree. So I have a bachelor's degree in communications and marketing that I got in 2015 and I also have a master's degree in healthcare administration or the acronym is an MHA for short and I got that in 2020. So I went back to school in 2021 for my nursing degree and I will be finishing next spring. But in this video, even though most of the videos, if not all of the videos on my channel talk about nursing school and my nursing school journey, in this video I'm going to be talking about what it was like for me to get my master's in healthcare administration. And I do plan to make more videos like this because healthcare in general is my passion, even though I'm in nursing school right now and I am prepping to be a nurse and I'm planning to become a nurse. I'm still of course going to make nursing content and that is what a majority of my videos will focus on, but I do want to start incorporating more healthcare administration videos because I'm also passionate about that and I am very skilled in that. I've worked in healthcare administration for years at this point and I do have a degree in it. Now one thing that I hear a lot of nursing students talk about, whether it's in my cohort, in my school, online, or just kind of just anywhere that I hear nurses and nursing students talking, I hear a lot of people saying that they don't want to be at the bedside their entire career and that's totally fine. I feel like when I go on social media, I see a lot of things about advancing your career and advancing your education after you become a nurse. Like do not just stop at your associate's degree. Do not just stop at your bachelor's degree. There's a lot of encouragement to go back to school and go farther, whether that is to become a nurse anesthetist, whether that's to become a nurse practitioner. While I do think that those routes are incredibly amazing, those are very clinical routes and they are amazing routes if you want to continue in patient care and you want to be working directly with patients. However, there are other alternatives that I don't really see talked about as much online and that is the administrative route. A master's degree in healthcare administration is amazing if you are a nurse or a physician or a physician's assistant or just anything clinical. If you want to go back to school, that is an option that's available to you. Also, if you have absolutely no clinical experience, you have no desire to work with patients or no desire to go to school and get a degree to become a clinician like a doctor or a nurse, you can just go straight into healthcare administration. I have my master's degree in healthcare administration, but there are bachelor's degree programs that you can enter into and I believe there are also associates degree programs for healthcare administration. Again, in the future, I will make more videos about healthcare administration and I will be talking about the different career paths that you can go down, whether you have a clinical background or whether you don't have a clinical background. There are a ton of different career paths that you can do with this degree and with this field. I will also be talking about the job outlook of this field. I'll be talking about the different salaries that you can make because there is a huge salary range and you can make a very comfortable living in the healthcare administration field. There are also so many different types of facilities and different types of environments that you can work in. So, in this video, I will not be talking about that, but I do plan to make more content like that in the future if you guys would like to see more of that. So now for more on my personal experience getting my master's in healthcare administration, I entered into a program and started classes in January of 2018 and I finished school and I graduated in June of 2020. And I will say that the average MHA program does take about two years to complete. Most master's programs, at least with healthcare administration, are go at your own pace and mine definitely was. I could have finished a lot sooner. The average time it would have taken me to finish would have been two years, but I took time off. I took about two months off from my master's degree and that was just because I went out of the country. I went to Bali and Indonesia for a little bit to work with kids, teaching them about healthcare education. But the program that I went to was actually a relatively small university in Maryland. It's called Stevenson University for those of you guys that know it or that live in the area. All of my classes for my master's program were online. The program was 100% online, even though it was an actual physical university. I did go to campus, I think I only went to campus twice throughout my entire two and a half years getting my master's degree and the first time was before classes even started. I went to campus for like a little ceremony, like an orientation. I got my ID badge, I met with some of my professors, I had some food. There was just kind of like an overview of the program. And then about a year to a year and a half into the program, I went to campus one other time with my family. I was a part of an honor society. I got indoctrinated into an honor society because my GPA was high. And so this was pre-COVID. They had a beautiful little ceremony with guest speakers and a dinner and I got to get dressed up and I went with my parents and my husband. And so we went for that event. This degree was 100% online and it was actually 100% self-taught. So of course I had professors that would grade my assignments, they would give assignments, they would leave discussion board posts, they would hold office hours in case I had questions. But for the most part, there were no lectures. So there were no recorded lectures, there were no live lectures. I don't think I had a single lecture throughout. That's not true. I think I did actually have lectures throughout the program. But on average, it was pretty much self-taught. I actually had to buy all of the books. So every single class that I had in this program, I actually had to purchase each book because I was teaching myself essentially out of the book. So for the class structure of my program, and again, this is my personal experience, my school. I cannot speak to every MHA program out there, but for my program that I attended, classes were accelerated. So they were eight week sessions, much like my nursing classes are now, if you've seen my previous videos. But my classes for my master's degree were very condensed. They were eight week sessions, totally online. It was go at your own pace in the sense that if you finished eight weeks and you wanted to take a break for eight weeks, 16 weeks, whatever, you could. So you could take a break without penalty. But in terms of the actual class, once you were in a class, it was really fast paced. It was eight weeks. And the layout of classes are totally different and the curriculum is totally different than nursing school, I will say. Nursing school right now, I have quizzes every week. I have homework assignments all the time, multiple times a week they're due. I have exams. I have a midterm, a final, a first exam in every class that I have. Now that I'm higher up in my classes, I have to take a standardized exam called the CMS. With the master's degree in healthcare administration, you do not have any exams. I didn't have any quizzes. It was strictly paper-based and research-based, which can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you feel about it. So something that I hear all the time with my cohort is that a lot of my classmates want to eventually further their education and get a higher degree, but they don't want to have to take exams or anything like that. A master's degree in healthcare administration is a totally different structure. I'm pretty sure that I did not take a single exam my entire two and a half years getting my master's degree. Not a single exam, not a single quiz. The layout was totally different. It was just all papers. Every single week I'd have a paper due and around the beginning of my program, I'd have like maybe a two to three page paper due every week. And then as I got farther and farther into my program getting my master's degree, it would be like a five page paper due every week, an eight page, 10 page. And then at the end of every class you'd have like your big research paper, your final project. And the big research papers could be like 20 pages. So it is a lot of writing. Even though my classes were all virtual, we did have group assignments. So at the end, instead of like a final exam like you have in nursing school, we'd either have a final paper, a final group project, or a final presentation. And the way that we did presentations would be that we would like create a PowerPoint. We would record the PowerPoint, record us talking on the PowerPoint. And that was how we did that since it was virtual. We also had discussion board posts every single week and every single class. That way we had the classroom feel and the discussion like feel. And I know that if you were in nursing school or getting your bachelor's degree, or if you've attended any format of college, possibly even high school now, high school is very different than when I was in school. But I know that a lot of you guys are probably familiar with discussion board posts where you're given a topic, you have to write maybe like a paragraph on that topic. And then by the end of the week, you have to respond to maybe one or two classmates. I will say that even though it's the same format in a master's program, or in my master's program, it was, it was a lot more intense. So the main thing that I've noticed a difference in between my master's in healthcare administration and my two other degrees, my bachelor's in communications and my now nursing degree, is that there is a heavy, heavy emphasis on research and making sure that your research is valid. And because of that, there's a heavy, heavy emphasis on APA formatting. So I remember on all of my discussion board posts for nursing school and for my first degree, it was kind of, I don't want to say half-assed, but it was kind of half-assed, like it really wasn't that serious. In my master's degree program, it was. So I'd have to write more than just a paragraph, it was honestly like a mini paper that I'd have to write every single week for the discussion board post. And then I'd have to respond to, depending on the professor, two to four of my classmates. And in my response to them, I would also have to pull research, relevant research. So a scholarly peer-reviewed article less than four or five years old. So I'd have to get references for my own response, and then I would have to get references for all of my responses to my classmates. So it was a lot more intense in that sense. Another thing about my master's degree program, and I'm sure that this is the same for most, if not all, MHAs, but I did not have an entrance exam and I also did not have an exit exam. So for nursing school, I had to take my HESIs. If you're a nursing student or if you are applying to nursing school, then you know, typically nursing schools will require you to take either the TEAS or the HESI, which are two entrance exams that are very similar to each other. Schools usually will require one or the other. And then before I got into my bachelor's degree program in communications and marketing, fresh out of high school, I had to take my SATs. There's nothing like that with an MHA program. You just apply to the program and you get in or you don't get in. You don't have to take an entrance exam. And then same thing with an exit exam. There's no exit exam. I know that with my school now, when I graduate next spring before graduation, I have to take an exit exam to see how ready I'm going to be for the NCLEX, which is going to be my board exam after I get my degree. For my master's in healthcare administration, after I turned in my last paper for my last class, I was done. I was graduated. I didn't have to take any type of exit exam or sit for any type of license because this is not a licensure type of degree. After you get your degree, you can go on and get a licensure in something else. So now when it comes to the actual courses that I took to get my MHA, I took business classes because essentially an MHA, in my opinion, is a business degree. It's kind of like a business degree in healthcare combined. So it's like a business degree focused on healthcare with some public health sprinkled in there. So I remember taking a class on epidemiology, which was so interesting to me. I did not even know what epidemiology was or how to pronounce it before I started my program, but I remember taking a class on epidemiology. I took business classes. I took a class on risk management and learning how to minimize risks for patients in healthcare settings and minimize risks for the staff, like the nurses and the clinicians, because their licenses are on the line. I remember taking legal courses and courses on the law and learning what is legal in a healthcare facility and what is not, what my rights are, what patients' rights are. I learned about patient safety. I took classes on patient safety. I took business math. I took classes that taught me about the structure of different healthcare organizations. I took leadership training classes, public speaking classes. And one thing I will tell you guys is that I got my master's degree from Stevenson University in healthcare administration. My mother also got her master's degree from Stevenson in nursing. So she got her MSN. We both went to Stevenson and we actually took a handful of the same classes. It was actually quite interesting, which just goes to show you that there is overlap between an MHA and an MSN. So in my opinion, a master's in healthcare administration is a great route for anybody to take. But especially if you're somebody who cannot go to school for a master's in nursing because you're not a nurse and you do not have a bachelor's degree in nursing, but you still want to go into healthcare administration, an MHA is an amazing route to take. So for those of you watching this video that may have been interested in a master's degree in nursing, but you're not a nurse, so you cannot even apply to an MSN program, an MHA really does have a lot of the same classes and you do learn quite a bit of the same things. Now when it came to my time management with my master's program, I did get this degree while I was working full time. If you've seen my videos on this channel, then you know that I work full time while getting my bachelor's in nursing and my program is full time. It's actually accelerated, but this is not the first degree where I worked full time. I also worked full time while getting my MHA and I worked a standard nine to five Monday through Friday job. And since my master's degree was online, it was so much easier, even easier than my bachelor's degree is now to get all of my work done. Typically I would go to work all day. I would come home, shower, make dinner, and then I would get in comfortable clothing. I would turn on the TV. I'd pour myself a glass of wine or sit with my dinner. And while I was watching TV or hanging out with my family, I would be typing my papers and just kind of doing research for my papers throughout the week. And all of my assignments were due Sunday night by midnight, so I'd make sure to have it all turned in on time. For me, that was really manageable because I am great at writing. Writing is my strength. English has always been my strength. Writing has been my strength. I find APA formatting and the whole research formatting and the research world, I find it interesting and I also find it very easy. So for me, I am able to multitask while I'm writing. Now for the cost of my degree, since this video is about my personal experience, I didn't do any research on the average cost of a program, but my program was somewhere in the ballpark of $25,000 to $30,000. I think it was probably closer to $30,000. I will say that I was on a scholarship program the entire time that I was in school. And so my scholarship was actually really decent. It ended up paying for more, if not more, it was a little bit more than half of my tuition. And pretty much my tuition, I remember this vividly, every two months, every eight weeks, so every new session, my tuition would be religiously $2,010. So half of that was just on my scholarship that was dispersed into my account. And then the other half of that I paid out of pocket. So I actually did not take out any student loans or any debt, personal or government or whatever. I didn't borrow any money from anyone for my second degree. I was able to pay the difference out of pocket, which was amazing. And I think on average, master's programs in general, unless you're like medicine or something, I really don't know. But in general, I think master's programs are usually more affordable than bachelor's degree programs. And so of course, I'm sure you guys can obviously do the math, but since my bill every two months would come out to $2,010 on the dot, and about half of that was paid by my scholarship. And then I did actually get awarded different scholarships and like funds and stuff throughout the program that also helped me. But I did have one main scholarship that I was on, if my GPA fell below a certain rate, I would get kicked out of that scholarship. I'm not going to mention the scholarship because unfortunately, it's not available anymore. But in addition to that, I did get like other scholarships and other gifts. I was on an honors program and stuff like that. So my grades were really good. And that helped out a lot. But on average, every eight weeks, I would get billed $2,010. Half of that was taken care of by the scholarship that I was on throughout the program. So we'll just say that every two months, I had to shell up $1,000. So that basically equated to $500 that I'd have to save towards school every single month. And I know everybody's financial situation is different. I will remind you guys again, that I was working full time while in the program. So I was making a steady full time income. And again, this was my second degree. So since I had my bachelor's degree, I was already working in healthcare with a job that required a bachelor's degree, I was already making a certain amount. And in addition to that, I was not renting anywhere I was living at home with my parents, my parents did not charge me any rent. I did not pay my own car insurance, I really did not have any major bills. So my paycheck, for me, it was nothing for me to just save $500 a month and put it towards my degree. And I'm very fortunate that I was able to do that. I know that not everybody has that option available to them. So that was pretty much just like a summary of my personal experience getting my MHA. I talked about the amount of money that I paid, I talked about the classes that I took, the program structure that I took, and the coursework and stuff like that. Hopefully it helped you guys get a better feel for what it might be like if you are interested in getting a degree or getting your MHA. I'm definitely really happy that I got this degree. It has helped me so so much just in life, my job opportunities, my job prospects, even the salary that I'm able to have and the salary that I'm able to ask for this degree has taken me so far and I've only had it for a few years now. And I know that once I become a nurse and once I get my license, this degree is only going to make me so much more marketable. But like I've mentioned throughout the video, you do not need to be a clinician, you don't need to be a nurse in order to get this degree and to run with it and to do amazing things with it. Like I said, I do plan to make more videos on this topic and what you can do with this degree and what you can do in healthcare administration. So if you have made it to the end of this video, I want to say thank you so so much for watching until the end. If you like this video, please go ahead and give me a thumbs up. 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