Denver School of Nursing--BSN experience

U.S.A. Colorado

Published

Hi there,

I'm starting this thread for people interested in the Denver School of Nursing. I'm starting the BSN program in Oct 2006, and I'm going to try and post regularly to give new/prospective students an idea of what to expect.

Thanks!

--Mary West

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What I know so far:

The first quarter schedule is INTENSE. My schedule is:

Mon: 10-4

Tues: off

Weds: 9-5 (This is an ALL DAY lab.)

Thurs: 8-5:30

Fri: 9-3:30

Every day has an hour for lunch scheduled, but otherwise no breaks between classes. The classes we're taking are: Basic Pharmacology Concepts (I've been warned this class is really hard), Pathophysiology, and Foundations of Nursing/Lab. The quarter is 11 weeks long. We don't have clinicals the first quarter.

They want us to buy four books. After I get them I'll post how much they cost (I'm probably going to Big Dog textbooks like everyone else.)

Our orientation is Sept 25th from 9-1, and it is mandatory. I'll post again if I learn anything useful.

SummitAP-

I currently go to DSN, I'm in my 4th quarter in Med-Surg 2 and my clinical is at PSL (Presbyterian St. Luke's hospital.) A few friends of mine who are in their 5th quarter had their med-surg 2 clinical at Good Samaritan Hospital in Broomfield. We are all in the ADN program and have had great clinical experiences. The school can be frustrating at times with a lack of communication with their students but all in all I've had a great experience.

For Foundations I was placed in a convalescent home, Med-surg I was in a sub-acute care facility in Lakewood, it was a great experience though as I did a lot of wound care, a foley catheter placement, and trach suctioning.

The BSN students seem to get the pick of better clinical sites than the ADN students as they have been placed at Denver Health and Swedish for a lot of their sites (None of the ADN students were.)

Anyways, hoped I helped!

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Specializes in Med/Surg and ANCC RN-BC.

I went to DSNand graduated March 2010 with my BSN. I currently work at St. Joseph's Hospital and love it there. I'm on an internal medicine unit. I was placed at hospitals for all my clinicals. I did Swedish, St. Joe's (a few times), Porter and Littleton. I know a lot of hospitals are taking us in for clinicals.

As for accreditation, I sure hope that they get it. That would open up many opportunities for new grads to work at university and children's (which is where I want to work some day in the NICU).

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I go to DSN, I am taking the full BSN so I am currently taking my final pre-reqs this term and next. (That will be 6 quarters of all pre-reqs). Anyway, though, I have not taken any clinicals there yet, I do know a lot of the nursing students and I know that all of the students I know, have had hospital clinicals...

Hope that helps.

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OH! And for those of you wondering about accreditation, the NLNAC conducted a visit and recommended us for accreditation. I sent an email to Dr. Banik and asked her when we would know for sure. She told me that TWO boards of nurses have to vote and approve. We should know by the end of June.

As a side note we had a wonderful visit and I am not concerned about us getting accredited.

There a few other nursing schools in denver getting theirs right now, like Platt College. I went there for three terms a few years ago and I know we are a million times better than they are. I think that if they can get it, we most definitely will too!

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Specializes in Emergency Dept. Trauma. Pediatrics.

I just saw a DSN student at PVH in Fort Collins yesterday. I had no idea they came out this far North. First time I have ever seen one.

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Specializes in Med/Surg and ANCC RN-BC.

I was wondering if any DSN alumni have gotten into graduate school, besides the University of Phoenix or Kaplan? Please let me know, because I want to get my MSN in education! Thanks

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Does anyone know the status of DSN's accreditation? I think the most recent posts said they would probably know in June.

And does anyone know what kind of jobs DSN grads are getting recently? Or if they are having a harder time getting jobs competing with other new nursing grads?

Any info would be helpful, thanks!

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Regional changed their rules at their last meeting, stating that schools must be in "candidate" status for four years rather than two. So, we will be waiting two more years. The NLN is doing a final site visit on August 24-25.

As far as jobs go, 91% of last year's graduating classes were placed in jobs.

Hope this helps!

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anyone applying for july 2012 I'm going to be using my gi bill so money is really not an issuie

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I have been researching this school for some time now, deciding on whether or not I should apply and attend. I finally decided to apply for the July start date and was feeling pretty good about my decision based on the reviews on this website. However, I recently have came across some reviews online that are making me change my mind. There are quite a few recent reviews from students stating how unprofessional and horrible the school is. Many of them say they are transferring and would not reccomend the school to anyone. Yikes!

Heres the website:

Denver School of Nursing - Student Reviews

Are there any current or recent DSN students that would say the same thing? Or anyone who has attended DSN in the past year that would have something positive to say about the school? After reading those reviews I want to make sure I am attending a decent school and I wont be getting myself into a mess by attending DSN.

Any info helps, thanks!

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I saw those blogs as well and to me it looks like a group of students that didn't pass some courses and had to leave the program. I'm sure they're very frustrated because the program isn't easy. If they're still in school and are having problems I think it's sad that they would knock the very school they'll be graduating from. No program is perfect but I know that my classmates like me were very happy with our education and the care and help we got from the DSN staff. I think if the program was bad you would see more than a few unhappy students bloging out of some 1200 graduates. I was told yesterday by my friend that's still attending DSN that the 2011 NCLEX pass rates posted on the State Board of Nursing website show DSNs NCLEX pass rates as high if not higher for both ADN and BSN than most Colorado schools. In fact higher than Regis! Check it out for yourself and see, I think that's the best way. http://www.dora.state.co.us/nursing/education/RN.html

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Specializes in ICU + Infection Prevention.

DSN won't let their students take NCLEX unless they pass a HESI that pretdicts a very high chance of passing NCLEX. That is even if a student otherwise passes their courses. And what percentage of students who start a DSN cohort get booted out of hte program before that final HESI?

Other schools filter on the front end with 5% or 10% acceptance rates into the program and have every student that starts the program prove capable of graduating and sitting for NCLEX even if 5% or 10% having to take NCLEX a second time.

Is it better to be filtered out of nursing after you put in 2 years and $50K?

NCLEX first-time-pass rates aren't always comparable between schools.

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