nurse refresher course you recommend or don't recommend?

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Would love to hear feedback about ONLINE nurse refresher courses that you felt were helpful in preparing you to enter nursing again.

Did anyone have a negative experience with one?

I'm enrolled in one right now, I'm not too happy with it. I feel if they had listed an outline of the topics to be covered on their website or provided a list of topics before registration, it would have saved me the money of purchasing the course as I could have studied on my own. I DID email before registration and the description was vague.

The course ended up being a group a powerpoint slides , each one a few sentences long, to memorize. Honestly I felt that I was getting a better review of nursing related topics by taking CEU'S and reading my old textbooks. The assignments do not have clear instructions. If you fail an assignment, you are allowed one re-take, if you fail again you fail the course and there is no refund. If you fail a test, same deal. You can only fail one assignment or one test..that's not such a big deal but the instructions that go along with the assignments are vague and email correspondence has resulted in one line answers (that continue to be vague). I understand it is a self study format. Wish I'd saved the money. I'm not finished with it yet so we'll see if things improve.

Any good experiences? Was your class online?

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Specializes in Gerontology, nursing education.

I was very pleased with my RN refresher course at South Dakota State University. It wasn't online but it was independent study so I could work at my own pace. At the time I took the course, the tests were all done on paper. I needed to supply the name and address of my proctor (I asked my pastor to do the honors) and the sealed tests were sent directly to him. When I was finished with a test, he sent them off to the school to ensure that there was no cheating. It was kind of a pain to have to wait about a week to get my test results---an online testing option would have been nice. Not a big deal.

I thought the course was excellent; I did 120 hours of theory and the information was so well-organized that I still have---and refer to---my syllabus. I also did 80 hours of clinical at a local hospital. By the time I was done with my clinical, I was functioning as an RN on that particular floor, with the same responsibilities and the same patient load.

Here's a link to the course I took. The cost is reasonable at $500 plus a textbook.

http://learn.sdstate.edu/nursing/rn.html

SDSU also has an LPN/LVN refresher course:

http://learn.sdstate.edu/nursing/lpn.html

HTH! Sorry you are frustrated---it sounds like your course isn't all that great.

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I heard UCSD has a good refresher course.

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