Congratulations to Anticoagulation Nurse on the CPNE pass!!

Tweety, BSN, RN · Dec 11, 2006

I passed the NCLEX-RN 11/30/06. I am now officially a Registered Nurse!!!!! !!!!! ! !!! ! ! ! ! ! !!! Maybe now my blood pressure will go down.

Congratulations!!!!!

anticoagulationurse · Mar 15, 2007

Well here I am in Alaska. Before I left to come here, my husband was laid off work and the day I was leaving to travel here I got bad medical news.

So, after working in AK full time for 7 weeks now I have endured: a flight home, a nuclear bone scan, pain and surgery to remove a bone tumor, 6 days of recovery, flying back to AK, car broken down and flooded inside, stereo stolen while I was gone, dog (who I had to put in a kennel in AK while I flew home for surgery) has a disgusting miserable infection, lots of money spent and everything in order to avoid the WA preceptorship requirement which would have meant 6 weeks lost pay at work back home in Washington.

Well, now that I have worked the "required 250 hours" I was told by the WA BoN would be necessary before I could endorse my AK RN license to WA, I discover just yesterday this was all for nothing because the person on the phone whom I had confirmed over and over again that this was necessary in order to dodge the preceptorship requirement, told me she had misunderstood the statutes. EXCUSE ME!? You were wrong about advising me that I would need to LEAVE MY HOME in order to become licensed in WA?

This misery. It is TRUE. All because of some person's mistaken advise from the WASHINGTON STATE BOARD OF NURSING!!!!! HELLO? Aside from the emotional and physical suffering of this ordeal, it has cost my family $2656 so far for me to be here. And, it is all for n-o-t-h-i-n-g, mind you. THIS is absolutely not my fault. I was misinformed repeatedly on several occasions.

Excelsior students beware, apparently even inquiring directly to your BoN is not a sure fire way to figure out the hurdles of earning an Excelsior education.

WASHINGTON Excelsior students. The BoN will tell you that you are required to do a 250 hour preceptorship (which they will tell you they don't care if it is paid or not, but seriously, who is going to pay you to be an RN when you haven't been allowed by the BoN to take the boards -Catch 22). You do not have to do this. You must simply apply for the NCLEX for another state and simply endorse your RN license from that state to WA afterward. No preceptorship, no proving you have worked as a nurse in that state for 250 hours. Nothing. Just pay the fees and be done with it. Best wishes to you all, may you learn from my apparently unorthodox way of getting through the (imaginary) hurdles.

NurseEllis · Mar 15, 2007

Anticoagulation Nurse: yes it seems several states are doing this, apparently they wont let you sit for the orginal exam, but will allow you to endorse in without any RN hours at all, FL being one of them. You are lucky and I assume you were a LVN/LPN prior, because in WA with me being a paramedic and soon to be a EC grad I would not even be able to endorse in at all.

Thank God I live in NYS and this states loves EC grads (although I wont be here very long!)

:)

Im sorry for your hardship as it does sound like you have gone thru alot in a short while. I hope things settle down and you find peace in your life

-Chris

ready4cpne · Mar 23, 2007

Anticoagulation Nurse: yes it seems several states are doing this, apparently they wont let you sit for the orginal exam, but will allow you to endorse in without any RN hours at all, FL being one of them.
-Chris

It seems that California will be going that route as well. Fortunately, I applied prior to all the CA changes, but what the CA board has done in the last few years is a shame. It was clearly politically motivated. Nontraditional RNs are seen as a force to be kept in check in states like CA. The traditional RNs would rather overlook the fact that many nontraditional RNs are actually more qualified than the inexperienced students coming out of the traditional programs. We need excelsior grads to make their way into state boards accross the nation, which will not be easy to do since the current board members will not likely approve. Excelsior College needs to start its own PAC and make political lobbying a priority to convince legislators that LVNs, LPNs, LPTs, and other experienced professionals should have an independent study program like Excelsior's available, and that it should be endorsed and facilitated by the boards instead of opposed and obstructed. Having said all that, I am not entirely against preceptorships or internships as long as they are flexible and can be done part time at many different locations throughout the state.

Lastly, I think Excelsior needs to improve on the material that it puts out for students who are qualified to take the CPNE. The current manual leaves much to be desired. It is obvious to the majority of students I have had the pleasure of meeting that excelsior is trying to milk students by purposely making the manual what it is, thereby driving students to sign up for the costly online conferences and 4 day workshops, which simply cover material that should have been better presented in a free text format. There is no reason why excelsior shouldn't be able to prepare videos of complete CPSs; they could have 20 or more such videos available each showing different CPS possibilities and giving actual examples of performance of the critical elements that apply to each nursing situation mentioned in the study guide. They could make these videos viewable online with a monthly subscription. Many junior colleges have nursing procedure videos available for free at their libraries. Multimedia seems to be conveniently passing by Excelsior's nursing program unless they can sell it at exhorbitant prices. We all understand the need for a private college to turn a profit, but to unleash these kinds of costs on unsuspecting students on their last course, when there is no turning back, and to do so by purposely withholding information that reasonable people would expect to have received, is unconscionable.

On another note. anticoagulationurse I admire your spirit. Keep up the good work, and may others follow.

anticoagulationurse · May 3, 2007

Licensed. Yesterday, 7 months after passing the CPNE and the day after arriving home (been gone in Alaska for 3 months due to WA BON error in information), I am a licensed RN in WA! It is OVER!!!!!:angryfire

Allow me to review my timeline:

Passed CPNE 10/1/06
Graduated 11/17/06
Passed NCLEX (RN in Hawaii - see reasons in revious post) 12/18/06
Endorsed HI license to AK 1/16/07
Moved to AK due to WA BON incorrect advise 1/27/07
Worked in AK for 6 weeks then applied to WA BON for endorsement 3/15/07
Found out I moved to AK for no reason at all 3/16/06
Mailed Verification of Original Licensure to HI as required by WA for endorsement application 3/16/07
Hawaii finally sent the Verification form to WA 4/23/07
WA lost my application which had been there for 6 weeks waiting for the papers from Hawaii 4/27/07
Redid WA application 4/27/07
Arrived home from AK still not licensed as an RN in WA (but licensed in AK and HI) 5/1/07
Got a call from WA BON saying they would not be able to license me at all because they (thought) I was not an LPN before Excelsior (dude, I was an LPN, in WASHINGTON!!!!!). 5/2/07
Corrected that info with the BON and got licensed FINALLY 5/3/07

SuesquatchRN, BSN, RN · May 3, 2007

Phew!

Congratulations!

SrStudent · May 5, 2007

Congratulations on ALL of your determined, hard work! This is just shameful on any board of nursing. I was just telling my boss that if you live in the U.S, all boards of nursing need to get their acts together and come up with a unified plan. From one state to another, everything is different. No wonder public schools are so messed up because there's no national standards for them either!

You'll find in any field that when a certain group feels threatened they will surely block your path. Obstetricians did it toward midwives; nurses have done it to health educators; lawyers have done it toward paralegals, etc. Now that someone has figured out a way for intelligent people to get a degree the non-traditional route, they want to block that too. Universities have kept us tied up in school for years with so many unnecessary pre-reqs (it's a money thing) that more and more non-traditional routes are coming. I took a health promotion class and afterwards, many of the students were wondering why it was even part of the curriculum. It sounds nice but the material was pointless.

So sorry this has cast a huge financial and emotional burden upon your family due to someone's "mistake" while working in a position where she should know better. You should follow this up with a letter of complaint to this person's boss and the state to ensure it happens to no one else. It is totally unacceptable but thanks for sharing that information with us on the internet. I'm a senior at a university and don't think I could tackle an internet program. Sounds like a lot of headaches to me.

txteri222 · Aug 26, 2009

you have helpful notes? Would love to have!

Thanks

SuesquatchRN, BSN, RN · Aug 29, 2009

This thread is years old, teri, and the op no longer posts here.