MGH IHP ABSN vs. Northeastern ABSN

boylstonstreet · Mar 18, 2015

I want to the MGH IHP ABSN program a while back. I have no idea if they've made changes to it since then. All I can say is that it was abysmal. A total joke. The administration was vengeful, unable to tolerate the slightest criticism or suggestion. They had made their own "online learning system", which was a non-functioning bulletin board that would routinely crash or lose our assignments, this went on for 14 months. Our simulation training was done by NP students who were just slightly less clueless than we were. We had one pretty good classroom instructor, but our classes were horribly rushed (we talked about shock for about 3 hours on one day, and that was pretty much the only time it was discussed). They were constantly threatening that if you failed any given test you would be kicked out of school (this said to a room full of over achievers who all arrived with batchelors degrees).

Clinical instructors were oftentimes poor teachers, angry and nasty. Complaints made against them to the administration would only result in more nastiness after the instructor heard that someone had said something bad about them. People who had no idea how to teach and no real interest in nursing were your instructors, just bad nurses who didn't want to do it anymore. Less than uninspiring, they were just sad, mean people.

Definitely some bright spots here and there, but just a piss poor excuse for a program. I graduated not knowing my ass from my elbow. I lucked into a med-surg job at a little hospital where I got some basic training. I pretty much had to teach myself everything that I know now.

Extremely expensive, crappy instruction given in a rushed manner by people who were condescending in every way. There were a few good instructors but mostly they were washed out med-surg nurses who seemed to hate everything involved with nursing. Our pharmacology and pathophysiology classes were literally a bad joke. We spent much more time in really bad nursing research classes than we did talking about how to take care of sick patients.

I've talked to a lot of people from a variety of nursing programs and I think they are all pretty bad, but some are better than others. MGH is definitely one of the worst.

Not sure if it is still like this, but we generally got shafted on our clinical placements. I learned afterwards that UMASS Boston got preference over us in clinical placements at MGH. Just bizzarre.

It's a name, that's all it is. If you tell people you graduated from there, they will be impressed. But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. The only good thing about it is that it went by fast.

I actually think the Northeastern program is probably pretty good. They seem to have some idea what a decent program would look like. I haven't heard particularly good things about Simmons, but I don't think it could be as bad as MGH is.

MGH may have improved since I was there (could not really have gotten worse). I have no idea. They sent some bizarre email out a year or two ago asking to talk to our nursing manager so that our manager could comment on our skills. They never asked us what we thought about the program.

I don't really want to identify myself because it's a small world and they were nasty people. I've been working in acute care and have done really well, I enjoy bedside nursing quite a bit. I just had to learn everything after I got out of school.

boylstonstreet · Mar 18, 2015

"At the end of the survey we request the email address of your supervising employer. This person should be the one who directly supervises your work. This person is the one who is best suited to evaluate your professional preparation and to provide feedback to us on the quality of our nursing instruction. We will use the email address to send to your supervisor a survey to complete online regarding your preparation. This is another way to assess our program effectiveness. "

It would have been helpful if they had listened to any of our comments about our education while it was happening but they hushed us the whole time and thus I just kept my head down and tried to get through it. Not listening to your students = bad teaching. I do appreciate that they are trying to get some feedback but I think it's bizarre that they think they need to talk to our managers. I can tell you, when I started, my manager thought I was a moron because I didn't know how to do anything. Luckily I got some training and mentorship in a small hospital where I could learn things.

I do hope things have changed. It's hard for me to write calmly about this because it was a pretty miserable time and I've kind of held my tongue about it till I put some distance and time between me and the IHP.

pi.heidi · Mar 20, 2015

Thank you so much for your feedback! if you don't mind me asking, what year did you attend MGH?

boylstonstreet · Apr 3, 2015

Sorry...I'd like to keep the personal details to a minimum. I honestly don't trust the people there very much at all and still have to interact with them on occasion.

I should say that I don't think my experience is necessarily so much different than other nursing schools. I ask around, generally people say that they did not enjoy their nursing school experience. Too much time wasted on totally useless stuff.

That said, I found the general candor of the MGH IHP faculty to be nasty, vindictive and unhelpful.