hospital based program

[toi121]

I am in search of a hospital based nursing program. I currently work within a hospital as a nurse assistant. Really want to relocate so all and any info will help me.

[mmc51264, BSN, MSN, RN]

Watts in Durham NC is diploma associated with Duke, Duke hires them (obviously no ALL of them, but they do hire diploma nurses)

[Spangle Brown]

I have a classmate that took that route. She started in a comm college and then transfered to a Hospital . The hospital would not accept her comm college classes, so she had to start over. She graduated and became an RN.

Years later, after working as an RN, teaching, etc, she was given the opportunity to advance, but she needed her BSN. No problem. She went to the local University and found out that they would not accept her courses from the Hospital, but would accept the courses from the comm college. She is finishing up her AA at the local college, so she can apply to the University to get her BSN.

Since some places want only BSN, and are fading out ADN's, I have no clue what that means for Diploma RN's. Good Luck

[happyinmyheart]

There is a hospital based program near me that is actually a BSN. So they are not all ADN college programs anymore :)

[TC3200]

Western PA has many of them, and you might want to look at the Pittsburgh area.

New Castle, Jameson Hospital

Sharon, Sharon Regional Hospital in conjunction with local Penn State branch (check on that one)

Washington, The Washington Hospital SON

Pittsburgh area:

Ohio Valley Hospital

Mercy Hospital

Shadyside Hospital

Citizens SON @ Allegheny Hospital, New Kinsington

St. Margaret, offered at Blawnox and McKeesport

There may be others. Those are the ones I can name without looking them up. Sharon Regional Hospital was bought by a conglomerate, and I think part of the restructuring involved changes to the nursing school. Of Jameson and Sharon Regional, Jameson was felt to be the better of the two.

I was at Washington for one year of the two-year program. That school starts a large class, like 60-70 students, and it's b__buster of a program that ties up a lot of TIME in class and saddles you with huge workload out of class. They have graduated SMALL classes, like 30-35 students for about the past three years. A 50% or higher flunkout/dropout/quit rate is far too high, imo. But that's the way they run it. They make a lot of money for about a year on the 30-35 that don't make it through, I guess.

Their grads didn't have any problems finding jobs. Most stayed in the area. One moved to TX and got her first RN job there. Today's diploma programs have just as much if not more college coursework as any associate degree RN program. The diploma students get a lot of clinical experiences because the hospital based schools can do whatever they want, and most of them have satellite facilities for say, peds, or wound care, or hospice care, LTC/geriatrics, or other specialties. TWH SON program had us in school 5 days per week, analogous to how the old diploma schools had students on campus and/or working in the hospital all the time. As you progressed into the 2nd year, more of your days were full-day clinical hands-on work v.s more of it being lecture time in 1st year. You did 12-hour shifts and lots of actual patient care, especially in year 2. imo, the more time you spend on the floor in school, the better you will be prepared for the real work world. Apparently the area's hospitals felt that way, but even they are mandating that after a cutoff all new grads must be BSN.

The college programs offer the advantage of block schedules. And colleges and universities have to be accountable to lots more people than diploma RN school director and instructors do. In TWH SON, the clinicals ran as a separate program, almost. The lectures included the entire class and thus everyone was getting the same lecture material, at same time, and same progression of topics. But the clinicals were ROTATIONS, based on availability of the hospital's facilities not sync'd with the lectures. Example: Everyone had to do a clinical on labor/delivery/newborn sometime in that semester, obviously not all 65 students could do that at the same time. So, some of us had to do that particular BEFORE we'd ever had that material in lecture, some were lucky and got theirs concurrent with the lectures, and some didn't get to do that clinical until months after we'd covered the material in lecture. Summary: Going to that school was like going to 2 different RN schools at once. I hated it. They hated me. I am not a random person. I came from engineering and tech, and the randomness and "woman-think" of that particular diploma school made it a MISERABLE experience for me. I think I would have been better off at any college program, actually, because I have had a lot of college and the fixed schedule and days or partial days off that college would have allowed me. Having to sit in lecture all day and then sit at home all night grinding away at coursework does not work for me. I can't sit sit sit like that!

[RNsRWe, ASN, RN]

OP: why are you seeking out a diploma program, specifically? You are willing to relocate for one....are you also willing to relocate to somewhere you may not even want to live, because that's where you might find employment?

I believe you are severely limiting your job options for the future, IMHO.

[TiffyRN, BSN, PhD]

There is one in West Texas (Lubbock). They have good NCLEX pass rates. Just the issues the others have raised regarding the ability to transition to BSN if that becomes needed. One of my charge nurses went to a Diploma school way back in the day (over 40 years ago). She was really disappointed when her exact school was certified as a BSN school a couple of years after she graduated. She continues to have no college credits and would need to start from ground zero to get a BSN (which she is passing on as she will retire in the next year or two).