I am sharing my husband’s story as fair warning to anyone considering attending PMI (Pima Medical Institute) either as a nurse or in any of their other classes.
My husband made a mid-life career change in 2008 and wanted to get into the medical field. He didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do, so it took an expensive Medical Assistant course at PMI. He graduated top of his class, received much praise from all his instructors for his positive attitude and extra efforts to make everyone attending the classes love being there. He quickly landed a position at Cigna.
After working for approximately one year as an MA, he decided to further his education and wanted to pursue the nursing field. He was encouraged to take a 1-1/2 year long course schedule to build upon his MA and get an associates degree in Healthcare Management (which he was told would give him all the pre-reqs to apply for the nursing program at PMI). Again he graduated head of the class. Then went onto apply for the nursing program with a 97% on his HESI test. The counselors said he was the poster child of PMI.
Today he went for his final interview with the Nursing Director at Pima, Mesa. He got an angry instructor that had NOT read any of his file, she seemed ****** off she was even doing the interview. She talked DOWN to him about all his education being just from PIMA(the school she is teaching at) and said she didn’t see any other college transcripts in his file. She had no clue that he had been working in the medical field for 2+ years, and only seemed to focus on his MA course, not the additional course load to get his associates degree. Additionally, she was asking canned questions and seemed to have no interest in getting to know a possible wonderful student that would do great things – just doing the basics to get through the interview.
He was then told by the nurse instructor thatunfortunately his classes with Pima were not valid as prerequisites for Pima’s own Nursing Program - that Pima does not issue enough credit hours in those classes to make them acceptable as prereqs. ?!!?
Pima had encouraged my husband to take the HC associates, indicating it would be helpful to get him into the nursing program for 7k, while he could have just taken the pre reqs. they offer for 2.5k.
We feel cheated by Pima. For the last 3 years, my husband gave the best of himself to the school getting exceptionally good grades and paid their outrageous tuition … For what? For nothing that they say to sell these courses to future students.
