Hospitals Paying for nursing school?

[LoveJRenee, BSN, RN]

Some one told me that sometimes hospitals will pay for your nursing school education(without you being a current employee of that hospital), if you sign a contract saying that you will come work for them after you graduate Has anyone every heard of this? If so, can how do I find out what hospitals offer this? Do I have to just contact every hospital HR?

[emmjayy, BSN, RN]

Yeah, the hospital affiliated with my school offers tuition reimbursement but only after you graduate, and only if you got exemplary grades in nursing school. They don't offer it at the outset.

[Double-Helix, BSN, RN]

These programs are now few and far between due to the saturation of graduate nurses and nursing students in most areas. Typically you will only find them in the areas where RNs are very scarce (think rural, lower-income areas). Your local nursing schools may have information on whether the hospitals in your area offer any contracts or tuition reimbursement. Otherwise, calling the hospital directly is the way to go.

[caliotter3]

I saw versions of this deal 30-40 years ago, but not lately.

[soigne, ASN, LPN, RN]

I don't believe any of the hospitals in my area offer programs like that. The hospitals here will do tuition reimbursement, but you have to already be an employee for a certain amount of time and how much you get depends on your point status (full time or 0.8/1.0 statuses will get more versus part time employees).

[Extra Pickles]

my advice would be to be very very wary of any hospital that is willing to pay your way through nursing school without you already being employed there. First, they have no idea if you are going to be a good employee and whether you will do well in school, so usually hospitals offer only partial reimbursement after you've completed a semester or a year and after your grades show you to be a good student. I haven't heard of any hospital offering such a thing to anyone who hasn't worked for the facility for at least a year.

Why would you want to sign a contract committing you to work in a specific hospital after you graduate? Do you know what the pay will be, what benefits they offer in the way of insurance plans and PTO? Do you know what units you'd be working on and for how long? Do you know what the consequences of failing out of the nursing program would be for your contract (do you have to pay them back all the money they spent up until that point if you fail)? If you agree to everything and they hire you, what happens if you hate the job, hate the hospital and want to leave, do you have to pay an expensive fee to break the contract? What about 3-4 years from now when school is done, what if you want to relocate to a different state, what are the consequences of breaking that contract then?

You have a lot more questions to ask than you are thinking about now.