Things I hated about my nursing school

[Endebted_Forever]

So, I'm a few weeks away from graduation and was reflecting with some friends over dinner about what we hated at our particular nursing school. Here was our list, what is yours? We were especially curious to hear about other Boston area school's experience.

• We have to waive health insurance every semester of the program. If you miss the deadline by even an hour, you have to pay the school almost $2,000 dollars, even if you already have insurance.
  
• The faculty create stupid online courses so they don't have to show up, grade, or provide instruction, but it looks like they are working. Many of these classes are pretty much just discussion board posts to each other that no one reads. Grading is awesomely random. When you complain about the lack of content, faculty become aggressive.
  
• Changes in certification mean that you have to take additional classes, but your advisor never informs you of this, but it is still your fault for not signing up.
  
• While your school has awesome simulation labs, you only step foot in them twice during your entire schooling, and then only to watch other people do simulation. Yet your school seems to get thousands of dollars in grant funds for training in simulation.
  
• You signed up to go to your particular school because you were lead to believe they were interested in starting a midwifery program. Then, once you are partway through, you are told that they are absolutely NOT starting one, sorry, but by the way your tuition has gone up $9,000 from what you were originally told.
  
• Your advisor is pretty assuredly autistic, yet none of the faculty seem to notice.
  

[ArtClassRN, ADN, RN]

Your school sucked.

Glad mine didn't.

[Here.I.Stand, BSN, RN]

The only thing I remember really not liking about my program was the "process recording" assignment each semester. The assignment involved writing out verbatim a conversation we had w/ a pt in clinicals. One column for the pt's words, one column for ours, and a 3rd for the therapeutic communication techniques used by us. This was supposed to be a 10-pg paper. I never could remember conversations verbatim, really didn't have therapeutic conversations long enough to fill a 10-pg paper, and in any case I wasn't comfortable w/ the idea of recording a pt's words word-for-word for someone else to read (in this case, the nursing instructor.)

But otherwise it was a good program. 96% first time pass rate on NCLEX which was higher than the state university in the came city as my vo-tech school; clinical experiences in pretty much every area except NICU/PICU.

Side note: if you're going to insult anyone, please don't use "autistic" as said insult.

[CelticGoddess, BSN, RN]

May I ask what is wrong with austism? My husband is an aspie and our son is autistic. I'm sorry your school sucked but that isn't one of the ways it sucked.

[Clovery]

I think my school was pretty good. But I had a similar experience with the simulation labs. They advertised high tech simulation labs and for every rotation we were supposed to spend a clinical day in them. Well, the first time we showed up and they kind of muttered that someone hadn't set it up so we would be doing case studies as a group instead. The second time the simulation was a basic mannequin and the instructor narrating changes in condition as we reacted. It wasn't until my final semester that we saw the actual simulation lab that we had heard about... turns out it was on a satellite campus and owned and run by the local hospital group and county EMT training. We spent a couple of hours in there and that was it.

[TexRN, BSN, RN]

Would anyone hire an autistic adviser though? I'm not quite sure how that would work...

[JustBeachyNurse, LPN]

Autistic is a spectrum. Many people with autism are verbal, highly intelligent, academic high achievers. Unfortunately many associate autism with "idiot savant". There are people with autism that are non-verbal and appear to be of lower cognitive functioning and have extremes of behaviors, often self injurious behavior.

A high functioning academically gifted individual with autism could easily qualify for a staff role in a college or nursing school.

[Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN]

Would anyone hire an autistic adviser though? I'm not quite sure how that would work...

Autism is not a preclusion for positions. Many on the autism spectrum are highly functional and would have no issues with employment.

[Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN]

MODERATOR NOTE:

While we are on the subject.

While we are talking about labels...using autism in this context infers that they are of inferior capabilities and likens to using the other derogatory terms used for developmental delays.

This thread is about the OP's issue with their program and not a debate about employment of individuals with disabilities.

Please stick to topic.

[abbnurse]

Congratulations on your upcoming graduation! Sorry about the things you didn't like about your nursing school......I loved my school, I was lucky. It was in the days before online classes existed, and we had dedicated , engaged instructors and advisors.

Good luck in your future nursing career!

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

Would anyone hire an autistic adviser though? I'm not quite sure how that would work...

Why would it not work?

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

I went to school in Boston and I had none of these issues. Anything that I "hated" about my university had nothing to do with the nursing program. I didn't like that the administration used its Catholic identity to censor student events and promote bigotry but that had nothing to do with the nursing school. The nursing school, actually, often spoke out against these things. Actually, we as nursing students solicited donations from Planned Parenthood and donated them in the school's name to the health clinic we worked at in Central America.