Does your school seem disorganized?

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Specializes in Adult Oncology.

Just a rant to start, then I will share examples. School I'm enrolled in is RN-ASN.

New classes starts Monday, March 16th. This week is "Spring Break" and campus is closed. I am enrolled in "Med-Surg II" or Complex, with corresponding clinical. Clinical is Monday & Tuesday. I have been repeatedly checking the online information for the classes and the instructor has not yet uploaded it.

This is not my first time in the rodeo. I know once they get the course information online, there will be approx. 1 ream of papers worth of stuff that needs to be printed out, as well as the information I *NEED* in order to be able to make it to the correct location for clinical Monday. Right now, 2 days before clinical, I have no idea where to meet, whether we need to be wearing scrubs or the business casual, or even any idea or where the clinical location is. Only e-mail I have received from the school is about a school wide convocation. At least I know my e-mail is working.

My plan is to continue to check the online information and e-mail in hopes that my instructor uploads the information before I need to leave the house Monday. If not, I will show up to the campus Monday wearing business casual with student scrubs in a bag in my car and go and see if they have any information at the school that may have been posted DURING SPRING BREAK.

Now for examples in why I feel my school is disorganized, aside from the above which is really more of an individual instructor issue.

- First experience with Nursing school was the new student orientation Friday last year in January. School to start Monday. You know the one. "Say goodbye to your life, your family, your pets. Quit your job. You are now a nursing student." Anyway. The instructor doing the orientation makes an announcement that "Some peoples schedules have been changed. Be sure to check the online information." Thanks for letting us know. In talking with students, those that had checked their schedules the Friday before did not know about changes. The changes seem to have been noted by those who checked again Monday. So the school knew for a full 4 days before announcing it during orientation. How about a simple e-mail? You are able to e-mail everyone telling us about the orientation, why not let us know so those of us who have jobs, car-pool, other obligations AS SOON as you knew about the schedule changes? Oh yeah. We are not to have any lives outside nursing school. 2 students in my class had to drop to be re-enrolled because they had finialized work scheduled based on what has been posted. My Wed/Thurs clinical was now changed to Friday evening Saturday all day. Welcome to nursing school indeed.

- Next weirdness didn't happen until the start of half of the Fall semester. The week before our Mental Health clinical started, we received a flood of e-mails and conflicting course information online changing instructors, times to meet, clinical sites, until ultimately we were told to meet on campus Monday morning to meet with "unknown instructor" at 8 am. Clinical turned out fine (other than the fact that we had to do alternate assignments 3 of the 8 weeks due to lack of patients available at our clinical site and we were unable to change clinical sites halfway through the class.)

- I was supposed to take this class January 2009. I had to drop the class the beginning of Fall 2008 due to a family medical emergency. I had to petition for readmitance, and there really wasn't an issue about me retaking the course. I had never had to re-take a course. If you petition for readmittance, you don't enroll yourself, the school enrolls you. So I made sure that my petition was accepted and was told to check the web site for what classes I was enrolled in. The week before school was to start in January, I still wasn't enrolled. I called the school. Turns out, there wasn't any classes available to enroll me into. Yet other students, who had FAILED and petitioned for readmittance had been enrolled in these classes. My petition, since I dropped very early and submitted my petition very early, was at the bottom of a pile of students. And they simply didn't have an open clinical spot for me. I requested to be enrolled in the next available class, which they did (March). Fair would have been enrolling people in a first come first serve type basis. Based on date of petition acceptance maybe? Instead they enrolled : "Whose application for readmittance in next in this giant pile of paperwork I've had on my desk?" style. :banghead:

Thanks for letting me vent. I love nursing school. I feel I have finally found something I enjoy and I'm good at. Please share your stories of school disorganization so I can feel that I am not alone. Or just tell me I need more patience. I already know I need more patients.

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Extremely disorganized! One time they mest up on the scheduling of the computer lab for test day and had to reschedule it. They emailed everyone that the test was moved from 2pm to 1pm the night before the test. I had checked my email right before it was sent out and didn't get the message. I happend to show up at school to study an hour early, and thankfully another student told me about the change. When we were starting the test the teacher said that people who didn't check their email and therefore didn't know were SOL. What!?!

There has been alot of other stuff too but I don't have time to write about it.

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Specializes in critical care, PACU.

tell me about it! my nursing school is soooooo disorganized and bureaucratic and are either doing things way too fast or way too slow. I didnt have time to read your response because I need to be studying but I just wanted to tell you I totally commiserate with you.

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I know this is an old thread but yes! My school is way too disorganized and I'm not even accepted yet! The way my school works is that when you are done with a set amount of pre-reqs, you can apply for the 3 year waitlist. So I finished up my classes, got the background check completed and applied for the waitlist. Then I found out that they didn't have a transcript from another college where I completed my English pre-req. I ordered an official copy and had them send one to me and one to the school. I called and called and called to find out if they received the transcript. When I got nothing, after a week, I hand delivered mine to the gal that is supposed to update it. In the meantime, I'm not getting on the waitlist because the school hasn't updated anything yet. So, THREE WEEKS go by to update one little class. I e-mailed the admin of my program and told her that I can get an unofficial copy of the transcript and e-mail it to her to verify that I took the class and would that work? She said, "No Problem". Had she told me that five weeks ago, none of it would have been a problem.

The second issue I had was when I took the CNA class...they didn't sign anyone up for clinicals until the DAY BEFORE we were supposed to go to clinicals. Then it was a raise the hand type of thing and she would pick out her favorite students in the class and they would get their first pick for clinicals. I told her that I had a job and had to get the clinical that was held on Saturday, Sunday and Mondays, and she didn't even bat an eye (One of my classmates gave up their spot for me).

Then, we were supposed to pass our class test for clinicals and I did everything correct and they failed me because I didn't write down a pulse rate on a piece of paper. Even though, I said out loud, that I would now write this in a chart, I didn't pass. It was because the instructor had a piece of paper and a pencil (that were hidden under 30 BP cuffs and 20 thermometers, etc). Oh, and did I mention that no one set the expectation that we were supposed to write anything down? Meanwhile people were passing because the instructions were written on the wall.

Now, I am waiting to get my letter of acceptance through the nursing program. They first told us they would be out on May 29th. Then it was Monday June 1st, then it was Friday June 5th and now it's not until next week sometime. Come on people! Get your (*$^ together! It can't be this hard!

Thanks. I'm done venting now.

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Specializes in L&D/Maternity nursing.

all too much. I think its a common theme. :-P

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Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

you are only seeing things from the student side of the fence. i don't think you have all the facts or know the reasoning behind why the instructors ended up doing things the way they did. part of what you are learning in nursing school is how to problem solve. it would be good practice to apply those principles to this situation along with the pronouncement of your judgment. in so doing, you should develop strategies (interventions) to help alleviate some of the anticipated symptoms you expect to occur based on past experience.

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I love how nursing schools expect us to be so on top of everything, to have copies of all of our health requirements, to keep tract of endless dates for pre-registration, registering, health requirements, clinical meetings, financial aid deadlines, and yet they don't have their act together at all. If we miss our paperwork for health requirements by one day then we have to wait to register two weeks after everyone else leaving clinical times on the weekend and with the worst instructors. Yet my program decided to rearrange the clinical sequence which added a semester to the program and didn't tell us until after we were accepted into the program. Don't even get me started on how awful our orientation was and it was run by our Dean of Students. I could go on and on about how dissapointing and horrid my nursing school is but what is the point. Nursing school for most is not a time to be cherished and looked back on with fond memories. I think it's like boot camp, do whatever you need to get through it and then move on!

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you are only seeing things from the student side of the fence. i don't think you have all the facts or know the reasoning behind why the instructors ended up doing things the way they did. part of what you are learning in nursing school is how to problem solve. it would be good practice to apply those principles to this situation along with the pronouncement of your judgment. in so doing, you should develop strategies (interventions) to help alleviate some of the anticipated symptoms you expect to occur based on past experience.

things are real different within the educational system nowadays. believe me, if it were that easy, we wouldn't be on here stressing. i can completely relate to this.it's unfortunate and saddening. i am in ny....the worst educational systems in the world, out here, in my opinion.

the ops post is just the tip of the iceberg for my school. it gets worse than that. i will just thank god when i'm finished with this adn. it isn't even the nursing material that stresses me..it's the disgusting disorganization of the program. it's quite infuriating at times. i'm used to being organized to a t.

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Bottom line--- nursing school is run by women, sorry but it's true, women are highly disorganized, scatter brained, often emotional, vengeful, spiteful.

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Specializes in ICU + Infection Prevention.

If women are disorganized, why is mine always making me clean up after myself?

Re NS, I am really sick of the last minute scheduling of stuff that could be scheduled. "Oh by the way... you now have lab... tomorrow morning." That or something similar has happened many times. "By the way, there will be a mandatory presentation off campus this Friday night, so cancel your plans!"

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Lol Jasoncl1974. My spiteful, emotional, disorganized, scatter brained self just realized something. Did you join this forum JUST to seek out a 2 year old post to criticize women? Wow. If that doesn't speak volumes...

Anyways, The bottom line- disorganization is REALLY annoying and is a huge problem IMO. some of my friends were told a week before clinicals what times they would need to be going in, thats not enough time to let your employer know. I'm not sure how they expect us to keep up with it, but thank god we do! :D

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you want disorganized, listen to my school.

we have 5-week long classes, one after another, except for most clinical classes that are 7 weeks long. our geriatric clinical was coming up and no word from the school. the thursday before clinical's we got an e-mail stating clinical's start this sat-sun. for our current adv med/surg we received an e-mail the week before saying why didn't your class organize themselves into clinical groups, it might have been that we never received confirmation of clinical times and days.

our classes are posted well in advance up to 30 days before the new one comes up, we have been pushed back 5 times because they never bothered to secure an instructor for the class. we receive calls telling us about test days in the middle of the week with little to no notice. i know several students have been told to turn in clinical paperwork, which the clinical instructor was supposed to turn in.

if my tuition has gone up each year, why can't they lock down the basics like which clinical site, at which time, with which clinical instructor? in addition, we never know when these people are out of the office, which seems to happen with a great deal of consistency. 250+ student nurses and 1 academic adviser, who never has answers for us, is a bad plan.

:down:

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