I just wanted to take some time and give my opinion about attending nursing school at Hawaii Pacific University. I remember last year when I was considering attending HPU and I asked in this forum if anyone knew what the nursing school at HPU was like and did not get many responses. So I wanted to offer some information in case anyone is considering attending and also to make sure that the school is accountable in some way for the good and bad way in which it treats it's students.
First off, HPU does have some good things going for it. It's a small school, in a beautiful area, that is very international where you get exposure to many different cultures and people. Some of the professors that I have had have been amazing and inspiring. Some of my fellow students have been intelligent and wonderful, but most of the students are not what I would consider "stellar" or motivated people.
With that being said I have had many dissapointing and frustrating experiences with the University to the point where I just cannot in good conscience recommend it to anyone. I am a mature, hard-working, adult student. When I was accepted at HPU I was told that I could start clinicals after one semester of finishing some prerequisites because they were transfering most of my prerequisites from the college I had attended prior to HPU. Unfortunately it took me three semesters and thousands of extra dollars because of the way their system works. The only way you get a spot in clinicals is by the number of credits you have from HPU. As a transfer student you are at a disctinct disadvantage. When i arrived at HPU to get into clinical you needed 15, after a semester it was 30, finally after taking 19-20credits spring semester I got in with 45. Had I known that it was going to take me three extra semesters to start clinicals I highly doubt I would have come to HPU, but they conveinently leave this information out when they send you your acceptance letter.
Dealing with the nursing school administration is like dealing with DMV on crack. The HPU Nursing Office has got to be the absolute most disorganized, ill-logical place on the planet. I really think a clincal study needs to be done on how an environment can foster such lack of organization and common sense. Nothing is ever really clear or well-planned out. Every semester you have to deal with some stupidity that threatens your chance at being in the program. Whether it's clinical health requirements that constantly get changed, lost, or whether it's the nursing curriculum where instead of thinking you'll be able to do a semester of clinicals in the summer in order to graduate the follwoing spring, but they decide out of the blue to not offer those clinicals this summer so you're stuck at the school even longer, it all is just too much to bear.
I've had friends endure horror stories that could make nursing students ears bleed. Whether it was my friends who mentioned to a nursing professor that you might want to aspirate the needle before giving the injection, and the instructor being so embaressed she tried to make his life miserable for the rest of the semester and tried to find grounds to ultimately fail him, or the time I got a letter saying that because I have so many credits I am now ineligable to receive any financial aid in the future (with two more years of clinicals to go at $10,080 a semester). The school knew how many credits I had when I transfered and how many credits I was going to need to graduate, why didn't they tell me this before I came?
I know every school has it's good and bad points and I think nursing schools are exceptionally prone to disorganization and frustrating moments. With that being said I think HPU really takes advantage of it's students, both their money and their sanity, and it's time that other people needed to know about it. The school feels like it can make thee demands because their are so many nursing students that want to attend but if people knew the truth this just wouldn't be the case. So my advice to anyone considering HPU is to think long and hard about your financial situation, about your sanity, and about if you want to go to a school that really doesn't have it together nor cares that when it's screwing you. I also really want to save anyone else from what I've had to go through with this school.
