FNP at Spring Arbor

Cococure · Apr 10, 2019

5 hours ago, ERRN1224 said:
Cococure, which school are you currently in that offers the Fitzgerald review?

I am at a state school in Ga. and it's not perfect by any means but I can say I am learning because 1) I had great preceptors who were MD's so I had to step my game up because they were used to PA students 2) I study a lot, masters programs are intended for the adult learner so its a lot of self study.

PreviousSAUstudent · Jun 27, 2019

Just graduated, would not recommend the program. This is based on my personal experience only. This began at residency, one year into the program, when I was told I could not do clinical hours in my state, due to not having clinical instructors licensed by my home state. This has happened in four other states as well, that I am aware of.

There have been many, many issues in the previous 6-8 months for my cohort and the one before me. Due to clinical audits not being efficiently done during the program, several students were made to complete additional clinical hours at the end, and some had to find new preceptors or wait for openings with their previous preceptors. I was one of those students who was delayed. I took boards and was successful prior to completing clinical hours, only to think I was finished and had to complete more clinical hours after some of mine were zeroed out by the nursing office.

There is open hostility from the nursing office, and clinical instructors are not monitored closely enough in my opinion. Students are able to double up clinical hours, but many are refused as their preceptor paperwork was held up in the nursing office so long, the double request was denied due to not having an "approved" preceptor.

Many students lost preceptors due to the delay of the nursing office, or had to sit out and wait for an opening as the available date passed by without approved paperwork.

Emails to the nursing office often go without a return response, phone calls are not returned either.

As for the passing rate, that is due to each student cramming for the board exams, not due to the content taught in the program. We are expert level APA writers, but the content is not addressed as closely. Personally, I had several instructors who were not NP's or never worked as an NP due to their choice or circumstance.

midwstrn · Jun 27, 2019

1 hour ago, PreviousSAUstudent said:
Just graduated, would not recommend the program. This is based on my personal experience only. This began at residency, one year into the program, when I was told I could not do clinical hours in my state, due to not having clinical instructors licensed by my home state. This has happened in four other states as well, that I am aware of.
There have been many, many issues in the previous 6-8 months for my cohort and the one before me. Due to clinical audits not being efficiently done during the program, several students were made to complete additional clinical hours at the end, and some had to find new preceptors or wait for openings with their previous preceptors. I was one of those students who was delayed. I took boards and was successful prior to completing clinical hours, only to think I was finished and had to complete more clinical hours after some of mine were zeroed out by the nursing office.
There is open hostility from the nursing office, and clinical instructors are not monitored closely enough in my opinion. Students are able to double up clinical hours, but many are refused as their preceptor paperwork was held up in the nursing office so long, the double request was denied due to not having an "approved" preceptor.
Many students lost preceptors due to the delay of the nursing office, or had to sit out and wait for an opening as the available date passed by without approved paperwork.
Emails to the nursing office often go without a return response, phone calls are not returned either.
As for the passing rate, that is due to each student cramming for the board exams, not due to the content taught in the program. We are expert level APA writers, but the content is not addressed as closely. Personally, I had several instructors who were not NP's or never worked as an NP due to their choice or circumstance.

Thank you for the information. That is a lot to deal with especially when students should be concentrating on school work. I will continue where I am currently. I guess there is no perfect place.

ERRN1224 · Jul 19, 2019

On 4/6/2019 at 12:02 PM, ERRN1224 said:
Also currently I am playing $650 cr/hr but there is a registration fee of $40 and a technology fee of $100 each semester.

Well I just got my statement for fall 2019 and the price has gone up......now I am paying $712/ a credit hour!!!! THAT IS OUTRAGEOUS!

PLUS...Registration fee is $40 and Technology fee $53, each semester.

That is the new price for the online nursing program!!!!!

TraumaRN_1 · Oct 8, 2020

I do not usually post things online, but I feel VERY strongly about this. Please do not go to this school. If I could prevent just one person from going to this school, it would make me feel better after suffering from this horrendous university.

They are accredited by the CCNE, however, they do not uphold the standards set by the CCNE. They do not abide by the Sawyer initiative and they change the structure of their program as they go. Halfway through the program, they added new requirements which cost me an extra $500. They also changed the structure of the program so in the second year of school I was not able to take my didactic courses for 6 months if I could not find a clinical. That set me back 6 months in my schooling and they told me 1 week before classes started.

Finding clinical sites is very very difficult with this school because most clinics already have affiliations with the top 5 schools in the state. Creating an affiliation with a new school is a legal issue, so most clinics are not willing to do that. For larger chain clinics, the affiliation process can take 3-6 months (I only chose family owned clinics for this reason). Then once you submit your paperwork to the nursing office, they take forever to approve it. A lot of people got held up from starting clinical on time because their paperwork was not approved yet.

Communicating with the nursing office is very frustrating. They do not respond to emails. I usually have to send a second email before I receive a response back and that takes multiple weeks. Then, they don’t answer all of my questions in their response so the email correspondence continues. They do not answer their phones or return phone calls, so it is very very frustrating that it takes weeks-months to receive an emailed answer. Regarding clinical sites, different people in the nursing office will tell you different information about requirements. They will also email back “this information was discussed at residency” after waiting weeks to receive an email answer from them.

The nursing office is hostile to their students and publicly shamed one student during residency. They picked apart her email and told us it was unprofessional and that she needed to check her grammar before she hit send. The student was frustrated with changing rules and was respectfully addressing her issues. But the nursing office displayed the email from a projector and picked it apart. They say they are a Christian university but as a believer myself, I am sad and frustrated about their condemning, impatient, inflexible, unforgiving behavior.

Now, if you read all of this and ignore it because it sounds awesome to take one seven-week class at a time, that’s exactly what I did. So I get it. I didn’t learn anything from the classes, but that’s fine with me because I’m cool with self learning on my own. But the process of clinical rotations and necessary coorospondecne with the nursing office for clinical will make you crazy. I am personally 1 year behind in clinical because of it—meaning my graduation has been delayed that long.

**also as a note, when they tell you the program is only 2 1/2 years long, that is the timeline if you double up on clinical hours (which wouldn’t have been possible working full time). If you do one clinical site per semester, the program takes 3 1/2 years. Doubling up on clinical hours is not always possible bc you have to request special permission from the nursing office to get approved for that.

read all of these other people’s posts please. There is a reason they are so adamant about not going to this university

BRUSH · Jun 8, 2021

Don't go here. Trauma RN 1 captures the nursing office staff perfectly. Worst experience of my life.