where was allnurses.com when...

From a purely technical point of view I think nurses are probably better trained now because current information is so much easier to access. It takes about a quarter of the time to access information now as it did even 15 years ago. The internet, the web, PCs, laptops, smartphone apps, Kindle and on it goes.

Then again, the three-year diploma grads of yesteryear could hit the ground running with little or no orientation on their first jobs, while the graduates of today often need extensive training to get up to par.

I agree 100%, and I was having trouble conveying what I meant. Since she mentioned "hitting the books to dig the info out" I focused my answer more on that, but there is no doubt that diploma school trained grads had been immersed in the other components I mentioned briefly, which would include the extensive time spent actually working the floor and getting hands-on skills training.

I don't know quite how the burden of clinical training got shifted from the colleges of nursing to the hospitals, but I do know that for the most part, new grads from BSN programs of the 70s and 80s I worked with quickly integrated into the workflow, meaning that likely the clinical hours in college programs have been declining at a steady rate since the demise of the diploma schools.