Johns Hopkins Entry into Nursing (MSN) Fall 2021

trypanophobia counselor · Feb 1, 2021

Does anyone know how many clinical hours this program has?

kesha111222 · Feb 1, 2021

41 minutes ago, trypanophobia counselor said:

Does anyone know how many clinical hours this program has?

1,000

FuturePsycNurse · Feb 2, 2021

Does anybody know if we have to do the NursingCAS Academic Update?

Clo · Feb 2, 2021

2 minutes ago, FuturePsycNurse said:

Does anybody know if we have to do the NursingCAS Academic Update?

I think it’s only if you have updated your transcripts since you submitted your application or if you plan to take more courses this coming semester.

amanda12 · Feb 2, 2021

4 minutes ago, FuturePsycNurse said:

Does anybody know if we have to do the NursingCAS Academic Update?

I asked someone in admissions this question and she said it's easier for them if you just email your unofficial transcript with updated grades, etc. directly to them at [email protected]!

So when I emailed them my update, I included Fall 2020 grades as well as the classes I registered to take Spring 2021.

FuturePsycNurse · Feb 2, 2021

Cool, thank you guys!

RN Imposter · Feb 2, 2021

Hey Guys,

I hate to be the "negative natalie" but as a recent graduate of this program (Spring 2020)- yay Covid ? I'd like to give some real information that I truly wish someone gave me before going to this school. #1, you are seriously and I mean SERIOUSLY, overpaying for your education. Don't get me wrong, the lectures and very knowledgeable professors who are teaching are excellent but the clinicals were literally CRAP. I barely got to practice any clinical skills aside from checking glucose levels, taking vitals, and administering PO meds. All of the skills you learn in simulation and lab, you won't have much opportunity to practice with real patients in your clinical rotations much less your instructor explain to you where you should be charting in EPIC, what you should be looking for in terms of your orders, where to find labs. That 30 min video module is useless. I'm in a residency program and have found just how profoundly poor my clinical rotations were in preparing me for the real job compared with other school like UW or Towson University or even community college nursing students are getting and this came from feedback from my unit manager, preceptor, and residency education program manager who train dozens of new nurses in their residency program. I paid 100K for an education that did me a disservice in not properly teaching me or providing a standard level of skills practice in my clinical rotations to ensure I would survive an RN residency program. I'm actually contemplating returning to a previous career in corporate should I get fired from my current new RN position. And just so you know, I studied HARD. I mean, I slept 3-4 hours a day, worked my *** off, NEVER missed a lecture or clinical day not even when I was sick. I graduated as a member of the national honor society for nurses, so it wasn't because I'm a poor student that I'm performing horribly as a new nurse. You should know all of this before considering plunking down a sizeable chunk of money for an education that may not properly train you! And no, hospitals truly do not care where you graduate from. I had a lot of rejections until I finally found a place willing to take me and that shiny name of "Hopkins" did nothing for me. Current hospital took me because of my previous volunteer experience on a similar unit prior to my attending nursing school. You'd do better to go to a cheaper school while working as a nursing assistant because what really helps, is having hospital work experience to lessen that gap between nursing student to real nurse. That gap is REAL if you've never working in the acute care setting or have a prior background in healthcare. New nurse salaries are quite low especially when you factor in monthly student loan payments and the high interest rates. Do your due diligence. Go to a cheaper school. Interview current nurses working at Hopkins Hospital, you'll find many of them did not go to Hopkins for their schooling so that should tell you, it doesn't matter where you graduate from.

RN Imposter · Feb 2, 2021

Sorry for the typos and bad grammar. I generally write well but not when I'm ticked off after realizing I basically dumped 100K of my life savings into a subpar education.

brpo0167 · Feb 2, 2021

10 hours ago, RN Imposter said:

Hey Guys,

I hate to be the "negative natalie" but as a recent graduate of this program (Spring 2020)- yay Covid ? I'd like to give some real information that I truly wish someone gave me before going to this school. #1, you are seriously and I mean SERIOUSLY, overpaying for your education. Don't get me wrong, the lectures and very knowledgeable professors who are teaching are excellent but the clinicals were literally CRAP. I barely got to practice any clinical skills aside from checking glucose levels, taking vitals, and administering PO meds. All of the skills you learn in simulation and lab, you won't have much opportunity to practice with real patients in your clinical rotations much less your instructor explain to you where you should be charting in EPIC, what you should be looking for in terms of your orders, where to find labs. That 30 min video module is useless. I'm in a residency program and have found just how profoundly poor my clinical rotations were in preparing me for the real job compared with other school like UW or Towson University or even community college nursing students are getting and this came from feedback from my unit manager, preceptor, and residency education program manager who train dozens of new nurses in their residency program. I paid 100K for an education that did me a disservice in not properly teaching me or providing a standard level of skills practice in my clinical rotations to ensure I would survive an RN residency program. I'm actually contemplating returning to a previous career in corporate should I get fired from my current new RN position. And just so you know, I studied HARD. I mean, I slept 3-4 hours a day, worked my *** off, NEVER missed a lecture or clinical day not even when I was sick. I graduated as a member of the national honor society for nurses, so it wasn't because I'm a poor student that I'm performing horribly as a new nurse. You should know all of this before considering plunking down a sizeable chunk of money for an education that may not properly train you! And no, hospitals truly do not care where you graduate from. I had a lot of rejections until I finally found a place willing to take me and that shiny name of "Hopkins" did nothing for me. Current hospital took me because of my previous volunteer experience on a similar unit prior to my attending nursing school. You'd do better to go to a cheaper school while working as a nursing assistant because what really helps, is having hospital work experience to lessen that gap between nursing student to real nurse. That gap is REAL if you've never working in the acute care setting or have a prior background in healthcare. New nurse salaries are quite low especially when you factor in monthly student loan payments and the high interest rates. Do your due diligence. Go to a cheaper school. Interview current nurses working at Hopkins Hospital, you'll find many of them did not go to Hopkins for their schooling so that should tell you, it doesn't matter where you graduate from.

Hi there,

First of all, I am SO sorry this happened to you. I can’t imagine your frustration. You are not the first person I have heard this from, which makes me a little worried. I’m not even into JHU yet but I’m applying to other schools and have made this my top program I am interested in. Just out of curiosity, do you feel like the clinical experiences were lacking due to Covid and not being able to go into the hospitals ? also, how many students were there in your sim labs and clinical rotations ? Do a lot of them feel similar since getting a job in the field ?

When you talk about the gap between school and becoming a nurse what is it that you are referring to? The fast pacedness, job itself, incontinence care things, etc. ? I’m only curious because I worked as a CNA and currently as a caregiver and I’m just wondering what particularly you feel you are not prepared for if there is anything specific.

I so appreciate you being so honest for us trying to figure out where to go and how much to spend and what to prioritize when it comes to school.

RN Imposter · Feb 3, 2021

Hi Brittany,

You ask some good questions. As for Covid, honestly, it really only affected my last clinical rotation (my synthesis practicum) and just really the last month and a half. We were done with the program in April. Clinicals were made into virtual simulations around middle of March when everything shut down due to the pandemic so I didn't really miss out too much there. My clinical rotations were just horribly structured (or rather unstructured). Some folks had good experiences but it really depended on who you had as your clinical instructor and you get a different clinical instructor each semester so it's not like you will be guaranteed to have that that same wonderful instructor again and again. Don't get me wrong, all of my instructors were super nice and knowledgeable nurses but quite frankly, my first semester instructor didn't show us anything. We were just told to go to our assigned patient, take their vitals and chart it in EPIC and to let our nurse know that we completed it. She didn't even show us where to chart, didn't even get to perform head to toe assessments and chart that, or even do blood glucose checks. We were changing bed sheets and helping to bring food and water to patients [face slap]. Of the four fellow friends I asked who graduated in my same program and cohort, ALL of us agreed our clinicals were crap. You should ask some hard questions if you do a campus visit. Ask if they have a clinical skills competency checklist. I'm not talking about a checklist you get from doing skills labs and simulations. There should be a checklist of clinical skills you have to perform ON THE UNIT for each clinical rotation. You should be holding them accountable to making sure you get a chance to practice these skills ion real patients- PERIOD. You're paying a lot of money for this, they need to be held accountable for that. It's great having nice instructors but quite frankly, I'm not paying you to be my friend. I'm paying you to teach me clinical skills and prepare me for a future career in nursing. I'd say there were typically 6-8 students per 1 clinical instructor and they kept accepting more students to pay for that shiny new nursing school building so I wouldn't be surprised if that ratio has become 10:1 now. You can't give meds or perform skills without your instructor present or at least the unit nurse you're assigned to present so you can easily see, it's not going to be feasible to let you do a lot of stuff when there are too many students to one instructor. Typically, you'll find that the instructor will grab 4 students in the morning to give 9am meds, and the other 4 students to do afternoon meds and that's pretty much it. You're just going to perform tasks that fall under the "Daily Cares/Hygiene" tab in EPIC cuz that's pretty much all you can do without really ahving your instructor with you and the unit nurse feels a little less grumpy about getting stuck with you. Most nurses at Hopkins resent and complain whenever nursing students show up on their unit. You can hear the collective groan. If you get assigned to 11 West, RUN, ask for a different unit. That unit has a reputation for hating students and they keep trying to avoid putting students there but seem to have trouble doing that because stupid school accepted too many students and can't find enough clinical placements.

Seeing that you have a prior career as a CNA and caregiver, you might actually be on a better footing. The few folks who seemed OK with their education were folks who already worked as EMTs prior to coming to the program or were scribes or CNAs or became CNAs during nursing school if they managed to find time to work. The program is really daunting. So you really only have time to do just one other thing so choose wisely on which will really help round out your resume to get you that dream nursing job. I wished I had worked as a CNA while in the program but chose to do research instead which was a big mistake for me not having a previous background in healthcare. Hopkins is a great place to go if you plan on doing medical research after you graduate but honestly, you're overpaying if your goal is to become a bedside nurse. You'd be so much better off going to a school that costs less because you're going to get either the same or even better quality teaching. You're just paying for the name and hospitals truly don't care about that. Again, interview the nurses working at various hospitals, you'll find a lot of them went to community colleges or just regular good public schools. Many of the nurses working at JHH did not graduate from Ivy League nursing schools so that tells you something.

The biggest gap I felt transitioning as someone who had a career outside of healthcare, was not having enough experience with clinical skills like inserting a foley catheter, trach suctioning/care, hanging IV meds/fluids, inserting PIV catheter, etc. Doing it just once in lab and maybe like once or twice in one of your clinical rotations is hardly enough to allow yourself to be proficient to do it quickly with minimal cuing/guidance which is what is needed in a hospital setting when you'll have 4:1 patient:nurse ratios and in some places 5:1. Also, just learning the regular operational/administrative logistics in the hospital setting added to my learning curve. Figuring out which tabs I need to chart in EPIC, which provider I should contact for which issue pertaining to my patient, getting familiar with typical order sets and parameters in EPIC, how to send a page to the provider using Emergin vs Secure Chat, etc. and where everything is located in my hospital. It's a lot if you're still struggling to perform basic nursing skills quickly with minimal guidance if you did not get enough practice opportunities in your clinicals. You will struggle, and it's gonna be ugly to the point where your nurse manager is telling you that you have 4 weeks to make a big improvement, otherwise, they're going to have to let you go because they can't invest anymore time to having a preceptor guide you and show you how to do things because you lacked that experience in your nursing school. And I'm sorry, but you can't memorize a lab manual. It really just boils down to getting that muscle memory from practice. It's like playing a musical instrument. You learned how to read sheet music really well but if you never practiced playing the piano and one day find yourself trying to press keys down, the music just sounds horrible. You have to practice it to the point where you don't have to constantly look down to see if you're fingers are in the correct position, and you're playing the right keys while looking up every 5 seconds to read the sheet music. Hope that makes sense. Sorry for the super long post here. Really ask some hard questions, and get opinions from multiple sources! What Hopkins is asking you to pay is a significant amount of money. You're sacrificing ability to buy a house, to afford a new car, to take a vacation etc. by going there. Make sure it's worth it! I'm speaking from a place where I was earning close to 100k In my previous career. I knew I was going to suffer a bit of a pay cut starting all over as a new nurse, but man, it hurts even more that I took out a large loan with 7% interest on top of the pay cut and it wasn't even worth it. Shame on me for falling for that shiny Ivy League name. I feel like I basically just paid for a gold trademark TRUMP brand name to be put on my masters certificate that is not worth the fake gold it's made out of LOL.

randocurmudgeon · Feb 4, 2021

@RN Imposter

Thank you for sharing. I'm so sorry to hear about all the negative experiences you've had. The fact that the lack of clinical training has left you feeling unprepared and inadequate for your current position is truly unfortunate. If I were in your position, I would feel extremely demoralized as well - especially if my supervisors mentioned that new grads from other programs were performing noticeably better than I was. Do you think part of the reason is that they have much higher standards for JHU grads?

The learning curve for new nursing grads can be quite steep, but do you think the training at Hopkins has set you so far back that you feel unable to overcome the initial obstacles (I imagine you are getting a lot more practice now in a real clinical setting)?

You make a lot of good points about the cost of JHU. $100k+ is actually mind-boggling... I agree that with such a high cost of attendance, we need to make sure that the quality of education, training, opportunities, etc. all match what we are paying. The price shouldn't just be for a brand name on our resume. Even if we're paying for connections with top nursing faculty or clinical placements at a top hospital, I'm not sure the cost is justified.

Thanks again for your input!

randocurmudgeon · Feb 4, 2021

If anyone is curious, here is the complete fall start curriculum I found from one of their prior information sessions. Sorry for the poor image quality.

I don't have other programs' curricula for comparison, but this looks intense!