Allina Health not hiring online NP grads

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Allina Health Nurse Practitioner II Job in Minneapolis, MN | Glassdoor

"Allina Health does not hire new grads from all academic institutions. Many proprietary on-line schools do not meet Allina Health's standards due to the minimal oversight of the student's clinical experience, the high faculty/student ratio, and the lack of focus on national certification standards in the curriculum."

I just don't have time to teach someone how to do a physical exam from scratch. Deer in the headlights is normal, not knowing how to start a history or conduct a basic exam is just...too much.

All of the students I have now have completed a standardized patient course and are ready to dive into real clinic. It's hard to go back from that.

I don't blame you at all! I am attending a hybrid program and completed a clinical last semester with an awesome preceptor. One day of clinical, she allowed another student to come with us because he arrived but the physician he was going to work with had an emergency and couldn't come in. The guy came from a program that required no RN experience prior to clinicals (my school allows you to complete some didactic classes with just your BSN, but requires 3 years of nursing experience before you can participate in clinicals). Although it was early on his in clinical, I was still shocked that he had no idea how to perform a full physical assessment! He said he had not yet started his physical assessment class. How does a school allow a student to participate in clinicals with no assessment experience??

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My school requires students to take the Advanced Health Assessment class directly before starting clinical. If more than one semester goes by before clinicals are started then they are mandated to take the final exam again, no matter what their grade was. If you don't have the required class within the required time-frame you are not allowed to proceed further in the program until those requirements are satisfied. You simply aren't allowed to step foot in a clinical area without having just completed this class so that it is fresh in your memory. Anything less than an 83% is a fail. It was the toughest class I did the entire program so far. Labs every single week, Shadow Health assessments and SOAP notes every week also. It was a whole lot of work but I'm grateful to have had it. I know it will stand me in good stead.

Sounds like we have a similar program! We had faculty-supervised labs AND that Shadow Health online assessment lab. I actually liked it though. "Tina Jones is here today for..." haha

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People need to get rid of this notion that all for profit online schools are bad. Certainly on a whole, they aren't the best, but that does not mean they pump out incompetent graduates. So long as you have solid preceptors that you find or the school provides and you pay attention in class to the basic principles, you will do well. Worse comes to worse, you can use third party programs like uptodate.

Medicine is changing folks and you don't need to be the best and brightest to be a competent provider. You need to be a good searcher--someone who when he/she doesn't know the answer knows to effectively search up the answer using reputable sources.

If you have a sharp mind and a passission to learn, you will succeed in this business. No need for this Degree trashing nonsense. All it is is a piece of paper and does not make you any better or worse than another NP.

people with sharp minds and the desire to learn usually don't try to take short cuts. aka online for profit programs.

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My understanding is that there are no for-profit degree granting allopathic medical programs in the US.

Use of the word allopathic keeps this statement true

I did some additional research and found that there is one Doctor of Medicine program, allopathic even, that is a for-profit school-- California Northstate University. I believe it is the only one of it's kind. There may be one in New Mexico, but I can't find much information on whether it's DO or MD.

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Specializes in Family Practice, Primary Care.

Your argument rests on the assumption that there are equal amounts of NPs from online schools and brick and mortar schools practicing, meaning they get hired equally around the country for the results to not shift. It could just be that online NP grads aren't getting employed in large numbers and thus haven't been able to affect the results in a poor manner yet.

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Specializes in Family Practice.

True, I see your point. Lowering the standards for admission can cause a problem. Overall, I think NP schools have to make it where they are responsible for students to have good preceptors and not place that burden on the student.

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I agree online vs brick and mortar means very little imo. I have taken many online classes that were hard and some brick and mortar where half the credit is showing up to class and trying (statistics...). Online is a great way to make school accessible to the working family raising nurses looking to better themself. Hell in med school there are note taking services so half (what Ive been told from two MDs) the student sont show up to their superior vrick and mortar anyway.

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nothing wrong with online as long as tests are proctored... and actually challenging/ relevant. I think the bigger problem is we really need all NP schools to have on campus physical exam components and proctored standardized patient exams. There is no point in going to lecture if you don't have to, but some of these online for profits don't even have proctored exams lol. So how do people even know if somebody knows the information, I mean you can pay people do to your homework.

Some of the better online schools do have I guess webcam proctoring though, which seems pretty legit as long as it is enforced.

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