vg2481

Hello everyone! I'm starting as a Nurse Extern at a level one trauma center ED. We were trained as clin techs but the focus of this externship is to learn nursing skills. My preceptor is great and is always eager to teach me, but I find when we have patients coming in and she asks me questions about what I suspect is going on with them that I'm unable to answer her questions. I've only taken fundamentals, maternal/fetal, psych, and community nursing at this time, so I don't really have any experience for med/surge and am not able to answer the questions she asks me (some examples: we saw a patient with a rotated leg that looked shorter than the other. she asked me what I thought it was and I just didn't know. also, she had me looking at an EKG and asked me what she thought was going on with the patient. another example was there was a patient who had would have upper abdominal pain when they would eat fatty foods that would pass, i didn't know it would mean a gall bladder issue) I feel a little behind since I haven't taken med/surge before being placed on this unit. Does anyone have any tips for resources that I can start going over before my shifts to get some better knowledge? I'm considering starting to read my med/surge textbook for school. I really want to be able to impress since the point of the externship is sort of like having a 6 week long interview. I've only got 5 weeks left, any suggestions on how I can try to get up to speed?

Clinical once a week, lecture once a week, and lab once a week. Lecture was generally 2.5 hours, lab is 2 hours. None of them were on the same day as the other for us.

Take this with a grain of salt since we are doing a completely different curriculum from you, but we had a selection of clinicals monday-saturday in various locations all over northern virginia. They are 8 hour clinicals and starting 2nd year we have 12 hour clinicals.

Congrats to everyone who got in!!!

Provisionally accepted means they got in assuming they pass the background and drug test and show up for orientation. Just a heads up, it is a urine drug test. If you don't pass either or don't show up for orientation, they'll rescind your acceptance.

Us: This is a possibly a reason You: This is absolutely not even possibly a reason and I know it without a doubt (despite having no evidence other than my personal feelings) Boiiiiiii. Next. I literally have friends who failed out of the program first semester who are just taking a year off from applying so that the department has time to acclimate to their new thing. It's not gonna be the same training. Next!!!! I worked 25 hours a week and it was hard. Really hard. I didn't even have to take any coreqs. It wasn't about time spent in class, it was more about all the material you had to know and teach yourself. It's a lot of time spent reading and reviewing and doing practice questions. I split it my work schedule over 4 days, but everyone I know who's working more than 20 hours is really struggling.

Hit the nail on the head, blb28! It's nothing like jumping into a regular physics or chemistry class, because the Nursing faculty have been teaching the material in a specific way for a long time. While the students will have no idea how things are set up, I entered the program knowing that the faculty knew exactly how each class was going to be set up. Along with dealing with updated content (which we'll all be dealing with our entire careers), they're now going to have entirely new syllabi, curricula, and even classes. For instance, we currently have separate classes for Maternal/Fetal health and Psych. Now, there are no separate classes for those but they're going to be integrated in other classes. So, I would understand if someone had trepidation about entering into this cohort.

Hi! Current student here. If I were just going to guess about why there aren't as many applicants, it's because it's an entirely new curriculum so maybe people don't want to be the first people to try out a completely different way the Nursing program is going to be set up.

Everyone who's been accepted has definitely been notified, but if one of them declines their spot in the program or if they don't accept it by the date discussed in the acceptance letter, then their spots are given to the next person on the list. They'll only send out denial letters once every single one of the slots has been filled via a confirmation by the accepted applicant. Only when you get a denial letter is when you for sure know it isn't happening for this semester.

Come on, guys.... There's an Alexandria campus. Of course Alexandria is priority 1 lol!!! Also, we found out on a Thursday at 2:00PM (For the traditional)

Hey, I wouldn't worry too much about the processing email. I didn't get mine until over 2 weeks after I sent out my application, they just say they're not sending any out (when they are) so people don't freak out and keep calling them asking where their processing email is. When they send out all of the processing emails, they'll give everyone ample time to get anything that's missing together. I don't think the program itself is "everywhere" or disorganized, like as I'm studying and learning the classes are great and everything has been smooth sailing since FDOC. However, the administration did take a good chunk of the Summer to get organized. I don't really have an issue with it because I'm pretty independent, but don't expect this to be like other colleges or programs that sort of walk your hand through every process. Make sure to follow deadlines and you'll be fine! I don't mind sharing my stuff - I had an A in A&P1, 2, and a B in Micro. My TEAS scores were a 100 in math, 95.4 in English, and 89.6 in Reading. Those stats are the ONLY scores that they're going to be looking at when making their decision. It's going to take them a while to get everything together even if it is for 30 people because they have to rank and sort all of the applications; this is a competitive program, so they're only taking the top 30 students even if everyone is qualified. It's just how it is - especially since it takes a lot of time and programming with clinical sites to get everything together for a Nursing Program. That's why they're changing it to a 78% minimum even though people in the high 80s/90s are getting in - it's because the people who scored higher have more of a priority to get in because they want the best students in the program to ensure their high NCLEX pass rates. While I was waiting for my decision, it was easy to rationalize a potential denial because I would say to myself that if I didn't get in, it wouldn't be because I wasn't qualified, it was just because there were too many people who were better than me. Doesn't mean I'm not smart/good, just means enough people were better. I recommend y'all look at it that way too if it helps! Nova's program is really intense. I took all of my prereqs in one semester (the classes i listed above plus SDV and medical term) by doing them in 8 week sections. It was hell, but it's nothing compared to this. I love it, but if you're not prepared to sacrifice a lot I wouldn't recommend the program. Also, I do want to say that they'll send out all of the acceptances at one time and won't send out the denial letters at the same time. This is because they give accepted students a few days to confirm that they want to be in the program. If people decide to decline their acceptance or just don't respond to the email, it's sent out to the next ranked students until every slot is filled. Only then will they send out denial letters, so you might not find out for sure that you didn't get in until a few days after people get accepted. I encourage you all to go through the thread that I was on at the end of the Spring Semester last year. I think you can just go to my profile on this and see my activity and go through the thread. Don't stress about it though, when they have information for you they'll send it out. Don't freak out if some people prematurely get a processing email.

Hi everyone! I was admitted to the Fall program and just wanted to let you know that I have heard from one of my NUR professor and a friend was told by an advisor at the MEC that there would only be about 30 slots for the Hybrid semester. There were 114 people admitted for the Fall, but the Hybrid class is always very small according to my professor. Hope this helps. The faculty doesn't know anything about admissions besides the usual amount admitted.

I just wanted to post this for the future applicants who will scour this thread like we scoured the previous threads: At orientation they said that they got over 400 applicants for the Traditional program and currently there are 114 total spots for our lectures this fall semester.

I know that they have the LPN-RN orientation next week that they will let new admits in in case they cut people who don't show up to orientation this thursday. I'm sure you guys will here back on Friday!

Much love to you Tania and best of luck in everything!