Washington hospital school of nursing

TC3200 · Mar 29, 2011

Um, yes, I am there now. Their complete program is 28 months including all of the college work. The first semester is all college, then you start nursing I in January and the nurse part runs 24 months, Jan to Dec. You said Fall, but Nursing I starts in January.

They are running integrated curriculum now, but that's changing to block. I am not sure which class will be the first one getting block.

You can do any or all of the college work at places other than Waynesburg. If you want to know what's accepted, track down the online course description and contact the TWH school of nursing. Patty Zink will probably be the one evaluating it. She'll send you a transfer credit form, you take care of getting yourself enrolled and pay for books, tuition, etc, and send the form back to her. Then make sure TWH SoN gets an official transcript when you complete the course. Online A&P without a lab, I don't know if they accept. You'll have to ask. I took conventional lab 4cr 2-semester A&P. When you make choices, also be looking at what BSRN programs accept because you'll want to do a BS completer after diploma RN. Fellow students have done the math and said it works out to less months and less expense to do TWH RN + a BS completer vs. do a full college BS RN degree.

Nursing I is pretty much the same everywhere, I think. I'd not call it different or harder. We did part-day clinicals ate local nursing homes, and then do several 1/2 days at TWH units. The school has (frankly) a smaller sim lab and less equipment than you'll find at the average county vo tech for LPN, but they are expanding the sim labs now and will have new equipment very soon. Remember, the state-funded schools get much more money than the private schools do, so far as buying equipment, plus there's always that flurry of spend-it-all-now-or-or we'll-get-reduced-funds-next-year in any government agency, so schools with gov't funding (and also gov't agencies) have largely been able to spend money like drunken sailors. Washington uses an ingenious and well-orchestrated rotation system to make full use of their facilities. I am really impressed at what they do.

TWH gets fewer applicants for each seat, plus fills the class first-come-first-served, so if you pass the preadmission tests and meet whatever else, you are in. No waiting around, getting ranked, etc. There's one hurdle, clear it, pay the app fee, you're admitted. Easier to get in than many places. They had a lower enrollment for class of 2013. Plus some people have already dropped out of the program. You'd have an easier time getting admitted than at CCAC and the local colleges / universities and the ones in Pittsburgh.

Housing in Washington is almost nonexistant at affordable rates. Since Washington was never urbanized like Pittsburgh suburbs, there are very few urban apartment buildings, like the typical prewar buildings that most cities have. Apartments tend to be carved-up old houses, and are very small, very half-azzed, and very cheap and rundown. And there's no parking or it's just street parking at most all rental places. Something like 56% of houses in the town are rentals, there's a lot of substandard firetrap housing, HUD and Marcellus shale rental markets keep all rents very overly inflated for the quality. The "apartments" that the George Washington Hotel offers are about one cut above flophouse. That place is more for disabled and low income elderly than for young women students, lol. If you live within a reasonable drive, stay where you are and commute. The parking is no problem. Lots of students park free at the far end of Leonard where a TWH clinic has a huge paved parking lot that's underutilized. Looooong walk on a rainy / stormy day, tho, and the hilltop gets loads of wind and lightning when storms roll through.

The area around the hospital, I have read lots of bad things about online in forums. Personally, I don't think it's as bad as they say. Wilson St. is a little shabby but Leonard & all the area to the north are nice residential streets. The closer to downtown, the worse it gets. All those streets that slope up from the south to the hospital are kind of a hodgepodge of decrepit rentals and owner-occupied.

TC3200 · Mar 29, 2011

Oh, and the lectures and clinicals and sim labs time blocks are variable and rotating, not fixed. The entire class attends the lecture, but lecture might be starting at 8AM or 9AM or noon 1PM or whatever. You might get a day that's fully loaded up all of your time incl lunch, or you might have an entire day off, or you might have just 2 hours of lecture. The spring semester is just M/W/F because students are still in college Tue & Thur at Waynesburg. It's confusing. TWH gives you a complete schedule for the Nursing I (or whatever class) semester at the first day of classes, and it's your responsibility to get yourself where you need to be and when, so that you don't miss anything. Some of the IT training for hospital computer systems starts at 7AM or 7:30AM.

Me, I am assigned to three groups:

one is for clinicals and sim labs

one is apparently for IT training

one appears to be used just for role-play and other rarely-occurring activities

then lectures are the entire class

This is how they train a class of 65 - 75 students with only two classrooms and two sim labs, etc. It's clever and it works, but can be a booger if you plan to also have a job while attending school.

mjohns13 · Mar 30, 2011

Thank You so much for all the info. I will be starting in august of 2011, but all my college courses are complete besides ap 1&2. I am a commuter student from morgantown so dont plan on living in the area.

I've heard so many bad things about nursing school and how bad things are just wondered how this program was.

You said most students go on to get a bsn? Wasnt planning on it but guess maybe i should start looking in to that.

TC3200 · Mar 30, 2011

Drive from Morgantown might be feasible 1st semester when you're only at TWH on M/W/F. It will be a time drain once you need to be there 4-5 days per week. You might want to consider renting a room at their student house and convert the drive time to study time and divert the fuel expense toward rent. There's a 2nd year student from Morgantown who is doing that now because the daily driving wasted too much time and money 5x per week. Most of your clinicals will be at TWH or nearby facilities, too. There are only a couple of things we'll do at Ruby at Morgantown. Living in/near Washington could be the wiser choice. I know it is for me.

The more urban areas are requiring BSNs in many places, either to be hired or to keep a job. Many employers have a tuition benefit for employees, and there are many BSN completer programs that are all or mostly online nowadays, so it's not a huge leap, provided you have the gen ed done and you've chosen your other college courses so that they apply to BS RN degree as well as meet a diploma or associate degree's requirements.

One issue you might want to research is what advantages does a block curriculum offer compared to an integrated curriculum, and who gets those benefits (is it the students, or does it make it easier for instructors to teach, or is it a less costly teaching program for the school to run?) I don't know the answers, and never thought much about it until now. But block curriculum is the standard, and Washington is switching to that like everyone else. That's what made me wonder is it easier for students to learn, since it's more of an immersion in one aspect of nursing, does the repetition (or something) help reinforce concepts before a new set of requirements are added? Ask around, because your learning style might be more in tune with one format or the other.

Also, I guess TWH does not have a dedicated pharmaceuticals class. Pharm is integrated throughout the nursing levels. I don't know whether that's good or bad. Have a concentrated semester of it, or get a bit at a time, I don't know which is easier because I have nothing to compare to.

For N1 clinicals, my instructor has been de-emphasizing generic names of drugs and directing us to key in on the brand names because nurses talk brand names, not generic. I'll offer this caution in favor of "know both and be able to shift back and forth": I can't imagine going through a nursing career not knowing what generic name corresponds with what brand name. The generic is what the stuff is, regardless of which manufacturer made it. When you start researching literature about disease processes or treatments for diseases, invariably the literature uses the generic name. Also with cost cutting and Obamacare looming, prescriptions are going to get pushed to the least expensive generic brand as much as possible. So, just learn both from the start and you won't have to stop later and waste time cross-referencing names later on. That is just my 2 cents, lol.

Math: All of these math tests do not allow calculators. There is a math section on the NLN PAX. If you score below a certain level, you'll get a remedial test to complete on your own and submit when Nursing I starts. Then everyone takes a math exam in N1 that you must score 90-something % on to pass, or else you get another remedial take-home test and a 2nd exam. If you don't get 90-something % on Math Exam 2, then some kind of remedial homework followed by Exam 3. This is a big deal, passing math without a calculator. It's the math skills TWH considers critical to preventing medication errors, which they are trying to eliminate all of. I forget what the exact % is for those exams, 93%, maybe? I passed mine and moved on to my other studies.

mjohns13 · Mar 31, 2011

Your are so full of all the imformation i have been looking for...THANK YOU SO MUCH....

I have a family and children in morgantown so commuting is my only option, i know the drive will suck big time, but have several people that will be in my class also commuting, like 5 from morgantown so hoping some carpooling will be an option for us.

I never really researched the differance between the block and intergrated, so not really to sure about that, but i definetly will be doing this soon... i do know we will be the last class admitted under there current program, and it will be changing in the next class coming in...

I have already had my preamission orientaton and all that stuff just waiting to get the physical done to get my Offical Acceptance, i did not have to take any pre entrance exams because im coming in with a BA from WVU... im extremly good in math, Thank goodness, so not to worried about the math

TC3200 · Mar 31, 2011

You're welcome. And welcome aboard. I've been perhaps only TWH student here. I'm not from Washington. I went there to take the NLN PAX exam to have a score on file for schools that use it, but liked the school and stayed. I also have AS and BA degrees and a host of other undergrad credits, and nursing is a career change brought about when my first career field became globalized and all the jobs were moved to locations in Third World countries.

https://allnurses.com/pre-nursing-student/student-malpractice-insurance-205848-page2.html Also see that thread. You'll be advised to get student nurse malpractice insurance in the lecture on legal issues early in the semester. But TWH doesn't give you any leads for where to get it, if they teach it the same way next year. I was quoted $36.50 per year.

Another thing I remembered is that you will want to buy stethoscope and BP cuff. This year's paperwork said they were optional, but these are such essential tools that they should me mandatory. Maybe next year's list will reflect that change, because the instructors are aware of that issue. Most nursing schools require those and a few other things, too.

Uniforms: This year, they were two readily available Cherokee pants choices in either white or navy, a white Cherokee 4700 scrub top and one other model that was added so the men could get something that fit them right, a white lab coat that you wear over street clothes in certain situations when you are not in uniform, and an optional Cherokee warmup jacket. These are all off the rack items, and not embroidered. You then buy TWH School of Nursing patches at $5 each from the school, and sew a patch onto the left sleeve of the tops and jackets. They recommend three tops, three pants, one warmup, and one lab coat. These uniforms are scrubs and they are relatively inexpensive, plus you can get that brand at a lot of different stores instead of having to go to one supplier. White shoes, solid leather or vinyl, not fabric or mesh, and no huge colored things on them. A small logo in color is acceptable. Tattoos must be covered.

You won't need a uniform until you have to go to a clinical. That, for us, was not until Feb 23 or so, as I recall. Gives you time to get at least one uniform and/or try to buy secondhand ones from someone who's graduated. Nursing I only has clinicals one day / week so you'd only need one uniform that semester.

TC3200 · Mar 31, 2011

hoping some carpooling will be an option for us.

This is very important: The TWH N1 schedule is not like college courses. (I had no idea how different it would be until after I'd started the program.)

You are not in Room 300 every T/Th from 8AM to 9:30AM the entire semester, a regular schedule like college. It's rotations. The class gets split into subunits and the school schedules you for various things at various times. There is NO consistent thing except that your clinicals are either Wed 7AM slot or Friday 7AM slot. Your sim labs will vary widely because there is one sim lab room that takes 10 people at a time, and so they use a rotating schedule for that room. The IT training, you have 2 morning sessions of, and that is also by rotation, not the entire class at once.

It's difficult to explain. Ask them to show you a copy of the schedule. Or there is one posted on the board on the school on floor "A" (where the classrooms are) on the board by the elevator. The N1 and the 2nd year schedules are posted there.

The only time that the class is all together in one room at one time is at orientation and for the lectures. Each person is in two groups designated by letters and one group designated by a number. You personally will be in, say, Groups A, D, and 3. Then you have to look through that schedule, day by day, and determine if and where any of Group A, D, and 3 are supposed to go on that particular day. The numbered groups are the clinical groups.

Then, if your Morgantown pals are Group B, F, and 7; and Groups A, C, and 12, you might conceivably have schedules that don't put you in the same place at the same time much except for lectures. Don't count on having your schedule exactly match your friends' is what I am saying. Splitting the class into groups for rotations carves up the class and starts sending you in different directions at different times, or different directions at same times.

What I am saying, is this is not a carpool or commuter-friendly schedule. It might be practical to carpool, but it might eventually turn out to be a huge impediment to orchestrate. You have to get you where you need to go and also accommodate others' schedules, too, if you carpool. It won't matter at the start of semester b/c you'll all be in the same classroom as a group. When clinicals and sim labs and role-playing start is when it gets complicated. The only anchors then will be you are a Moday clinical, or you are a Friday clinical. The rest of the schedule is different each day.

They split you into maybe 12 groups for clinicals. Your group will then be consistently either a Wed AM or a Fri AM clinical group. When you start clinicals you go to area nursing homes and there are at least 2 of those so your & friends might be at different locations in town but in the same Wed AM slot. Or, different locations and both in the Friday AM slot. Or different locations and one of you is Wed and is Fri day. You are at the nursing home just 2 times. Then you move to the hospital but might be in different parts.

Another wrinkle: "Later," and I'm not sure whether this happens in the first semester or not, you have to get your patient assignment via email from instructor the "night" before (you'd prolly actually get that by 2-3PM), go to the hospital unit the "night" before, log on, and print a copy of your patient's care plan and history and med list. That's another reason that a carpool might not work for you unless you luck out and the school happens to put you and your pals in the same clinical group, at least.

I hope that explains some of how this is run. My point is that much of the schedule is rotation of small groups, and the school lays all of this out at the start of the semester, and it's your problem to keep up with where you're supposed to be and when.

What you might all consider is renting an apartment in town, say the Maiden St. apartments, to have a crash pad for bad weather and late nights. I've only met two people who commuted from WV. One is the person from Mtown who rented a student room. The other person drives from Fairmont. Both said the commute was a real grind.

mjohns13 · Mar 31, 2011

Hey i would love to chat with you but unable to send pm untill i have 15 posts... if you would inbox me your email i would love to chat, you have been so helpful

TC3200 · Apr 4, 2011

Will do! :-)

TC3200 · May 29, 2011

Second semester has started, and the schedule has the same kind of commuter problems as first semester. Clinicals are Th & Fri. Lectures and sim labs are on the other days, but not a fixed schedule like college. There are 8 clinical groups of 7 students each. They tried to schedule one day off per week for each group, but said they didn't always achieve that. So, certain groups have certain days off and other groups have to report. Or have to stay late.

Peds is not being done at Ruby this semester. I'm not sure whether or not that's a permanent change b/c we were not given that information. Peds and all other clinicals will be at TWH. To accommodate that, they offered us the option of either the day shift or the afternoon shift for those clinicals. Afternoon is 2PM to 10PM. But I think that they also had to do that when they used Ruby.

There is a math exam in Semester 1 and another in Semester 2. Brush up on your pencil & paper skills, because no calculators allowed.

TC3200 · Nov 23, 2011

I hesitated to say anything in detail about this program for a long time, but I am no longer in this program.

It didn't work for me, because I needed/expected/wanted a predictable and consistent schedule, I learn best by immersion in a subject via a traditional college-type block curriculum, and the hours of lecture in this program, and it's hop-scotch arrangements of topics, were very grueling and long. There were normally no days off during a term in Nursing II and III. Adults have responsibilities, and this program wants ALL of your time. Single parents, people who must work, long-distance commuters, etc. all had a tough roe to hoe here.

I completed almost a full year. There were times in Nursing II and III when literally 70% to 80% of the class failed an exam. We know, because an instructor shared the statistics before being muzzled, and for the other, students polled the class to find out what the grades were, and they were all very,very low. It was kind of depressing, really. On most exams, lots of Cs, some Bs, few As. I think 13 or so failed out of the Nursing II (summer '11). Very tough program to achieve a high GPA in, for everyone, perhaps because it is so unique and customized by this community based-hospital. Graduate programs want to see GPAs like 3.55, so maybe getting a C here will limit your options for additional training. For that reason, even though I'd have to start all over at a different school because nothing transfers, I am rather relieved to be out because I am certain that I could achieve higher grades in a conventional degree program that is a better fit, and the "crash course" exposure to all of med-surg, psych, mother/baby/labor/delivery, peds, and some stuff I've probably forgotten about, would be a leg-up to me, if I start all over, or switch to LPN, whatever. Our clinicals did allow us hands-on experience in a hospital setting, but I wanted more of that and less lecture, lol.

The curriculum is unusual compared to a college program, because it is "integrated," and also is built around using THW's facilities. Major clinical experiences will not generally happen concurrently or on a timely basis, relative to the theory content. Think of the lecture/theory as one program, with it's own content and schedule. And your clinicals as a totally separate program that is held on Thursdays and Fridays, and for clinicals, you go where and when the TWH SON "appointment book" placed you, and that may not coincide with whatever you are learning in the lectures. Sometimes your clinicals happen before you get the throry training, and you have to do some self-teaching to complete your paperwork. Sometimes, they happen a long time after your lecture covered that material, and thus you put in some (or maybe a lot of) extra time to go back and review that content, and get your paperwork in on time.

Lecture Hours: Oh my, you'd better like sitting in an un-ergo fiberglass chair at a student desk for 3-4 hour half-day sessions, with a 5 or 10 minute pee break once every hour, and a 30 or 60 minute lunch break to split up the morning and afternoon sessions. Nursing II and III averaged 16 - 18 hours of lecture per week, consistently, until perhaps the last week or two of the term when you started getting some gaps in the schedule to help prepare for the Final. Based on 3 hours outside class study for every one hour in class, you'd need to put in 48 to 54 hours per week outside of class at minimum. I was going home and studying from 3PM to 10PM every evening, and at least one whole day of every weekend. And that was not enough time, because there are also those clinical writeups, computer-based trainings, independent studys, clinical conference prep-work, etc, going on at the same time. And remember: All of that clinical and simulation work could be on some topic that is totally, totally unrelated to the lecture and theory you are studying. That is the nature of this integrated curriculum.

In Nursing II, the computer-based training that was supposed to be part of the study prep for one of the exams was never available to us during that term. It was on Elsvier Evolve. In Nursing III, there were some clinical simulations assigned with specific deadlines for completion, and in the middle of that, the IT department replaced all of the student center computers but the software that we needed wasn't reinstalled for several days. The other computer room was reserved and unavailable to students for some of that time, so there was just no access to necessary software. And the school didn't extend the deadlines. I thought it was a little weird. The school explained it as: "the school of nursing has never been a priority for the IT department." Well, okay, but then can't you extend a deadline out to compensate? What harm would that do? Students are not a priority for the school is kind of way we took that.

Required reading: Most students who are succeeding in their first year are advising against doing much of this. Basically, in Year 1, they've crammed the content and memorized the Powerpoint slides, and not touched their books unless they didn't understand something on the Powerpoint and needed to go read just that particular section of the book. If you do what I did, and legitimately do your own thorough paperwork on clinicals, read all of the required reading, study the Powerpoints, you'll exhaust and bury yourself and will not succeed. This program had a philosophy of metering out information bit by bit, so don't try to do more. Just focus strongly on the bits that they hand you on the Powerpoints. Make a good guess at any test questions that don't seem to directly relate to anything you were taught in class, because they might not. (That sme issue came up every test. The instructors write their own questions. The students lobby to get credit for a different answer or to get a "bad" question take off.) And get used to seeing Cs and maybe a low B for so much time and effort. Those are typical grades for this program.

PM me for details of the schedule, or course content, or whatever interests you. Their schedules are a complicated and highly variable "appointment book" of where they've been able to wedge you in, where, when.

Pittsburgh hospitals are increasingly hiring BSRNs. TWH has a reputation for producing good nurses, but they've also done a lot of weeding out before a class ever makes it to NCLEX, so it's not all that surprising that the 1st time pass rate is very high. Almost all of their grads also take the Kaplan NCLEX review course prior to the NCLEX, too, so that is just something else to keep in mind. Sometimes a keen interest and the will to succeed transcend obstacles and stumbling blocks, and the credit really goes to the individual(s), and cannot directly be correlated to having received a superior-quality education.

Several instructors left the school at the end of the summer. The Director of Nursing also abruptly disappeared, and was replaced by a new one. You can make of that what you want, or ask the second-year students what they know or suspect. I wasn't part of any study group or or clique, and am not a local, so I never got much but a good dose of social isolation, because I relocated to Washington from over 100 miles away, and locals already have their established friends and routines, and are all commuters to scatter after class is done. As they say, everyone's experience in nursing school is different.

If you do decide to relocate here, there isn't much housing, especially if you want a townhouse-size rental or a small house or something. Washington is rural and thus never had as many apartments as say, Castle Shannon or other areas of Pittsburgh. The Marcellus shale boom has taken up all of the rental property since about 2008, and the realtors have nothing to rent that is not over in, say, Bentleyville or Mon Valley. Due to high demand / low supply of rentals, the local landlords do not accept pets. Houses that really run down rent starting at $1200 = $1300 plus all utilities. Nice townhouses are in the $1800 and up range plus utilities. HUD says a 3-br apartment gets $750 or something, so expect even the slumlord properties to be priced that high or higher. Washington has a lot of old homes from late 1890s to maybe early 1920s that have been subdivided into small 1BRs. There are lots of old Queen Anne frame houses that are jackleg converted to multi-apartment rentals, and parking is limited to nonexistent, and there are also a lot of housefires that occur in that type of rental.

Cheers! And best of luck to all of you. I am off to a happier existence, elsewhere. Perhaps a curriculum without so much spaghetti programming and drama. :)