Technicasualty

RESOLVED. I reached out to some family friends and they were able to pull some strings to get me in touch with someone. The answer, in case anyone needs it or sees this in the future, is that you don't need to submit any forms or fees with the VA BON. If your ATT has expired (and not because you failed the NCLEX) then all you have to do is to register again with Pearson Vue and notify the VA BON that you have registered again. If you fail the NCLEX, then you need to fill out a Repeat Exam Application and pay a $50 processing fee. Both of these situations only adhere as long as your initial application is not older than 1 year. If your application is older than 1 year, then it will longer be on file and you will have to do an initial application form and processing (criminal background check, fingerprint, transcripts, etc.) all over again.

Sorry, I got things jumbled around. My initial exam got canceled. I reapplied for NCLEX with VA BON. A family medical emergency came up and I had to reschedule my second NCLEX exam, but I don't have any suitable times before my ATT expires next week. I'm trying to figure out if I just submit the repeat examination form again to get a new ATT or if I need to do something else. My school didn't even know that to do and said to contact VA BON, but VA BON is outright ignoring my question.

My initial exam got canceled, follow up had to be rescheduled due to a family medical issue, and then I failed my NCLEX. My ATT is set to expire soon and I need to know how to renew it or get a new one. Is there anyone here that can give me any advice on what to do, where to call, what resources to look at, etc? A Pearson Vue rep for the NCSBN said to contact my local BON. I have contacted the VA BON support line numerous times last week and today. DHP sends me to nursing, nursing either hangs up on me without saying a word (at least they could say that I'm calling the wrong department, but this is the department that DHP has twice sent me to, so...), the phone rings endlessly, goes to voicemail after waiting for 20 or more minutes or the voicemail is full. I have wasted, literally 3 hours today trying to get someone on the phone to answer a simple question about what to do. I've contacted them via email and it's been 2 business weeks, no response. I've left voicemails and gotten no calls back (left more voicemails today). I've checked the website and scoured their FAQs (the website is an absolute mess) and I can't find an answer to my question. I'm at my wit's end with this and it's getting the be incredibly infuriating. The fact that VA BON is incredibly unhelpful and outright rude doesn't make it any easier, either.

I just got the message. Thank you so much for helping me with this! I really cannot express how truly grateful I am that you took the time to do this and to provide such great and meaningful answers! Especially to do so for some random nobody on the internet! Again, thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Our final semester is divided into two 7-week courses. Half the class does study courses first 7-weeks, the other does their preceptorship. Then they swap. My preceptorship ended the first week of March, right before all of this hit and then our school closed campus, all clinical sites were cancelled. So, I'm actually really lucky. Originally, half my class was not going to be able to pass due to not meeting the requisite clinical hours needed. However, our state BON created a waiver allowing students to use Shadow Health to complete their clinical hours. I'm not certain how it all works out and our program head is not discussing it with students other than those currently enrolled in the preceptorship course.

We had to turn in our questions at the beginning of the semester and these were the ones I submitted. We aren't allowed to change them. I know, it doesn't make sense, but school policies, bureaucracy, etc. The relevance to speaking Spanish is thus: I've worked for several years in restaurants and construction. In both I have needed to know at least very basic levels of Spanish to effectively work with my peers. While precepting, I had a pt who understood very little English. It got me thinking that maybe I should improve my broken Spanish to being at least semi-fluent. The translation service was very helpful, but it was a bit tedious and time-consuming. The question was something that just came off the top of my head and I decided to throw it in there. Thank you for your well-wishes! Ia greatly appreciate it. I hope you and yours are staying well during all of this!

I would greatly appreciate it! I am sorry to bother you all about this, but my other contacts have not followed through. I am having to reply via forum because I cannot send a Private Message. I know the questions might seem like a lot, but I really only need like one or two sentences per question. If you want to ignore some of the followup bits ("and why?" etc.) that is fine. I really just need something in writing. My professor is aware of the issues related to reaching out to online sources and, given the circumstances that we are currently in, has said that doing so is okay.

So, here's the issue: My final semester is divided into two 7-week courses. School policy dictates that both semesters use the same curriculum. Because of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, that makes this difficult for those of us taking this course in the 2nd half of the semester. Our professor is well aware of the issues with this and had requested for this assignment to be changed. The idea was kicked about for several weeks, but was denied due to school policy. She is okay with us reaching out online and recognizes the pitfalls with this. My personal issue is that the RNs I have reached out to, that I did my preceptorship with and the two that are friends of various family members, have not gotten back to me. I have followed up and still not received a response. The hospital where I precepted has closed the wing that I was on, converted it to a COVID-19-only wing and furloughed most of their staff. This is not their decision. It is a public hospital and the decision was primarily that of our mayor and state legislators. I'm not even sure who I could call and I doubt they're going to be any more proactive in answering these 10 questions than anyone that I have already contacted, nor more than anyone on this forum. I understand that this seems like a lot and I understand that many of you think this is stupid, a waste of time, irrational, etc. I agree. I would much rather just crank out a three-page paper about how I would answer these questions than waste someone else's time. I am simply trying to do what I need to do in order to finish my assignment and graduate. My hands are somewhat tied on this and so are my professor's. I apologize if this has upset and/or annoyed any of you.

For an assignment in one of my classes we are to ask 10 questions to a currently practicing RN in our desired field. I would like to go into medical-surgical nursing, so I would prefer to hear from those of you that are med/surg nurses, but I would be glad to hear from those working in other specialties. If you could, please take the time to answer all 10 questions. I'm not expecting an essay or anything, just some brief replies. Thank you! What do you find to be most rewarding about being a nurse?How do you deal with noncompliant patients?Have you ever had a patient that you refused to care for or were apprehensive about? I so, how did you deal with the situation? Do you prefer day or night shifts and why?What was your experience during your first month of being an RN?Is there anything that you learned later in your career that you wish you had learned earlier?Has there ever been an experience that made you think about quitting?If you do not speak Spanish, have you thought about learning Spanish as a nursing skillset? Why or why not?Did you start out knowing that you wanted to do med/surg nursing?What specialty other than med/surg would you prefer to work in?

@Chase123, I feel that it is too early to tell. The new coordinator is obviously stressed out, which I totally understand and sympathize with. She is working on getting the program righted and the hiring of the teacher that was not properly prepared and trained is not her fault. She inherited a lot of problems and she has every right to be frustrated. However, taking out such frustration on students is not appropriate and especially not in the manner in which she has acted. If she is getting that frustrated, the best thing is for her to excuse herself and collect herself. To be fair, some of the students have been rather annoying and pestering; not that this excuses her actions, but it does add some appropriate context. They have stated that we will receive our clinical credits needed to pass. Of that, I am certain and believe them. The main issue for many is that by not knowing when and where clinicals will be, they are having a hard time making appropriate changes to their work schedules. It doesn't help that management seems to be rather dismissive; a "suck it up" kind of attitude. @larkinbourne, I would say to definitely give the program a chance. You have worked hard enough to get into the program, so you might as well get credits for your classes while you are there and hopefully the program will right itself. The new coordinator has talked about coming in to troubled programs numerous times before. I cannot vouch for how well she handled them, but she does claim to have extensive experience in dealing with problematic programs. However, my ideology has always been "hope for the best, prepare for the worst." Hence my making a backup plan. @everyone - To be absolutely clear: I am not saying any of this to scare any of you off nor to discourage any of you. I sincerely hope that the program rights itself under the new coordinator's management. The teachers that are there are wonderful and really want to see all of us succeed. They are sincerely dedicated and knowledgeable. The program, when it is working, works well and is comprehensive. They will give you the knowledge and skills needed to succeed and to pass the NCLEX to be fully licensed. All of you that make it into the program have proven that you are dedicated and willing to work hard to achieve your goals. That is why I wanted to let you know about the current problems within the program. Not to scare you, not to discourage you, not to make you doubt your choices, but to give you all a realistic understanding and expectation. Many within the affected sections have been very discouraged. They expected it to be difficult, but the levels of confusion and resulting frustration has caused some to become very jaded, depressed and doubt their choices. Myself included, which I know to be to my own detriment. As I said, you all have worked hard to get into the program and I have no doubt that such dedication can help you surmount any problems within the program. However, do realize that if you are having a difficult time within the program, that there are other options. There is no need to give up. John Tyler's program is an exact copycat of Reynolds and your credits will be honored if you transfer. This should hold true for any and all of the various VCC nursing programs, as they are all unified under a single curriculum across all VCC campuses. Even if Reynolds does wind up still being a total mess, which it hopefully will not be, please do not give up on your goal of becoming a nurse.

Thanks for the kind words, eao704. In some ways things have gotten better, in other ways they have not. The coordinator has yelled at the entire class numerous times and actually screamed in the face of one of my classmates. Two of our teachers were appalled at the coordinator's recent outburst and one of them told us today that she was going to talk to the coordinator and let her know that this behavior is not acceptable. I am currently thinking about transferring after the end of the Spring semester. I'll see how things pan out, but I'm preparing an exit in case I need it. Our teacher, who taught at least two of the 8 sections, was either fired or quit, so our schedule has been moved around nearly halfway through the semester. That might be part of what they mean by "small transition." They literally don't have enough teachers right now. Two of our teachers have had to absorb 19 more students. Hopefully they will hire more teachers, otherwise the student body will need to be smaller, meaning less of you will be accepted. Regarding CPR: you will need American Heart Association's Basic Life Support for Health Care Professionals. Clinicals require AHA. Red Cross will NOT be accepted. I can't comment on HLT-105, but doing it through any of the private instructors is super easy and you can get it knocked out in a single day. Your confirmation will be sent by email. You will need to respond to this email within 10 days or else you will forfeit your seat. I recommend checking your email daily. Even if they say you won't get a notification until October 28th, still check it at least every week. if you have not taken BIO 142, then take it during the summer. Otherwise, your first semester will be BRUTAL. BIO 142 is required before you can do 2nd semester, but you don't have to take it during the Spring. BIO 150 will be required for 3rd semester. Taking both BIO, ENG and elective early or during the off season will reduce 2nd, 3rd and 4th semester from 13 to 9,10 and 10 credits, respectively. Having BIO142 under your belt will reduce 1st semester from 14 to 10 credits. Taking Ethics (PHI 220) as your elective will help for Professional Nursing Concepts (NSG 130), a first semester course. It's mostly just food for thought, but it helps when thinking about how Kant's formalism and John Stuart Mills' utilitarianism applies to nursing and its ethical codes of conduct. Either way, PHI 220 is pretty easy and I would recommend taking it online whether you do it during the summer or during the regular semester. If you have not taken BIO 142, then I would take that and ENG 112 in Summer 2019 and possibly your elective, as well. You will need to decide if you want to take BIO 142 during your first semester and do BIO 150 during the Summer, or if you would rather take BIO 142 during the Summer and do BIO 150 during the semester. (personally, I would take Bio142 in the summer and do Bio150 during the semester) If you have completed BIO 142, then take BIO 150, ENG 112 and your elective during the summer. This will allow you to better focus on your nursing classes. ENG 112 and PHI 220 are easy to take online. I would recommend BIO 150 in the classroom. From a Stafford loan standpoint, there is no benefit to being a full-time (more than 12 credits) student. You are more likely to receive higher amounts for Pell Grant, but it might not be worth your sanity.

I'm currently enrolled at Reynolds and the program is an absolute mess. I don't anticipate things getting that much better, either. The coordinator has repeatedly yelled at the entire student body and screamed personally in the face of individual students. They hired a teacher who hadn't taught clinicals in over 10 years and had no idea what was going on (it didn't help that she never had orientation). It took our group 2 weeks before we knew what was required and what we needed to do. Our course materials weren't stocked in the bookstore until halfway through the first week. Our teacher, who was just barely getting used to the program, either quit or was fired, causing our schedule to change around nearly halfway through the semester. I can understand the stuff with the teacher, stuff happens, but recently having our coordinator show up and angrily ask "why am I here?" when one of our teachers asked her to come and tell us what is going on with clinicals (we still don't know when and where and she keeps changing the day every time we see her), then yelling at all of us, then learning about her yelling in the face of one of my classmates... that was the last straw. I am going to finish out my year and then transfer somewhere, anywhere else. Is the JTCC program organized, structured? Are the teachers good? Any good experiences and bad experiences anyone is willing to share? I'm sure there are some teachers that may not be great, some bad organization here and there, etc. but I find it hard to believe that there are many other programs that are as absolutely messed up as Reynolds' program currently is.

Thank you, sford5006. I honestly wish we had someone help us at the beginning. We did have a few that chimed in, but it was very fleeting and brief. I will gladly help as much as I can. We NEED more nurses. Nurses are the front line in the health care field and doctors rely on us to help them diagnose and treat patients. Unfortunately, administration dropped the ball on our class. I hope it doesn't happen to you all. Some other tips I will give is this: Make a Facebook group for your class so you ALL can communicate with each other. This will be vital. Some of you will get information that others will not. You are all in this together. Help each other out and you all will succeed together. You will be divided into sections. Set up group texts, emails or whatever else to communicate within your own section. I am not 100% sure on this, but I think your section is the same throughout your entire academic career at Reynolds. The exception being students that are removed and later added due to failing or having to withdraw. GET TUTORING. You might think that you'll be fine because you did well before, but nursing classes are FAR beyond what you've experienced. Maybe it's just because our group has had a rough time, but signing up for and attending tutoring is a good idea if you want to achieve a high level of success. If you score below an 80 on a test, you will be MANDATED to attend tutoring until the next test. If you do not pass with an 80 on that test, mandatory tutoring will continue. AFAIK, tests will consist of 40 questions and ALL questions will be NCLEX-style. NCLEX-style means that questions will be phrased that a patient in a specific ward, tier or suffering a specific condition will be experience a certain complication. It's basically word problems and they are designed to trip you up on specifics. STUDY, STUDY, STUDY and then STUDY SOME MORE! I know many people have jobs, but if you can afford to take out student loans to reduced your work load to part time or not work at all, you will be MUCH better off. Some students will have prior or ongoing medical experience. Some of this is useful. Some of it is not. There are many people that work in facilities that have been taught improper procedures. Study your course material. Ask your teachers for information. As I said before: attend tutoring. This piggybacks onto what I said about working: You need to spend at least 6 to 8 hours PER DAY, EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK to studying. Some might get by on less time, some might need more time, but you should study every day for at least several hours. If you can do this with a full-time job, then godspeed. If not, then seek out student loans from Reynolds and possibly private loans. Nursing is not to be treated lightly. People's lives are, literally, hanging in the balance depending on how well you can treat them and how well you can follow proper procedure. READ YOUR HANDBOOKS. A lot of basic info is in there and much of this info is essential when it comes to clinicals. Ideally, you won't have to run and grab the phone to shout, "CODE RED!" But you should be prepared for it. Be assertive. If you do not understand something, then speak up. If class is dragging on, then ask your question in tutoring sessions. Again, and I cannot stress this enough: TUTORING WILL HELP YOU SUCCEED! I'm sure I can add some more stuff as I learn more about the program, but these are things that I have picked up within the first few weeks. Some might apply to you. Some might not. But they are a good general rule of thumb. If you thought getting into the program was hard... to borrow from Bachman-Turner Overdive, .

I am currently in the Fall semester. It was posted in the Fall '18 thread that those in the alternates scored between 82 and 83. We were told in our information session that those who scored above 78 typically got in. However, I do remember Ms. King saying that Fall tends to be more competitive. They also said that those were the highest they've had for minimum scores. Mr. King is not lying when he says average scores have gone up. Remember that you can only take the Kaplan twice. After the second attempt, you must wait two years until you can take it again. You can resubmit your application for Fall '19 in May of next year you can still take the Kaplan again. If not, then you can try to submit again, but you will still have to use your current Kaplan scores. You can read the Fall '18 thread here: https://allnurses.com/online-nursing-schools/j-sargeant-reynolds-1164855.html They take the highest score from each section and then tally that up for an overall score. Math, Science and Reading are all weighted at 30%, writing is worth 10%. They do not. Admission is based upon the Kaplan score. If there is a tie to get in, then they will look at your GPA for pre-reqs. Just a heads up to all of you who do get in: be prepared for some more math with your dosage test. The dosage test is for clinicals and you must score a 90% out of 20 questions. It is taken during the first week of class and you get three attempts. If you do not pass, you cannot take clinicals and you will be advised to leave the program. The questions will NOT be the same on your repeated attempts. If you did well on the math section in the Kaplan, you will do fine. It's pretty simple stuff, really. Things like "Capsules of Generic Drug are 250mg and the doctor prescribes 0.5g." You will need to do some conversions, though. Notably there are questions about dosage for a person who weighs X amount of pounds, but the dosage info is mg per kg. They will go over this in orientation and you will have plenty of time to study and get tutoring. Don't sweat it. It's pretty easy and there is plenty of opportunity for help if you need it. Also, I hope your semester goes smoother than ours has. Our professor is brand new and didn't arrive until 2 days before class started. She was not given course guidebook until halfway through the first week. The bookstore messed up and did not have codes for our course materials until halfway through the first week. Same deal with scrubs. The dean and the (brand new) coordinator came in and yelled at a bunch of us asking why we didn't have our flu vaccines yet (we were told during orientation to wait until we got an email), then told us we needed to get them ASAP. Our clinical coordinator then told us to ignore all of that and any flu vaccines submitted to Castle Branch would be rejected. When the dean and coordinator were asked about our clinicals, they were dumbfounded and surprised that we didn't already know. One of the teachers that took the new professor under her wing told us that, if push came to shove, she would run our clinicals herself because she didn't want us to fail because administration had screwed up. Things have finally been sorted out after the second week, thankfully, but it also means that some of use are WAY behind (my section being one of them) and are seriously struggling and still confused about how the program is supposed to work, while others are doing just fine. To be frank, I'm very annoyed and angry about the way the dean and nursing coordinator have been handling the situation. It never should have occurred in the first place and I don't know who the genius was that thought it would be perfectly fine to have a completely brand-new hire teach the entire curriculum without any sort of support or guidance from other teachers or staff. I don't blame the teacher; t's not her fault that they threw her to the wolves. Thankfully, the clinical coordinator has been awesome and is super helpful. So, if you have problems, DO NOT GO TO THE DEAN OR THE COURSE COORDINATOR! Seek out Ms King, the clinical coordinator, or one of the teachers. Clearly, the Dean and coordinator don't know how to run their own program. Oh, and a few other things: ALL nursing classes will be at the downtown campus. If you need to speak to an adviser or talk financial aid, then I would highly recommend using the Parham Road campus. I waited 2 hours to speak to a financial aid adviser at the DTC and left because I couldn't wait around any longer. At PRC, I was seen within 20 minutes. I'll check back and see if I can help answer any other questions you all have or you can PM me. I'm super busy having to play catch up, but I'm more than willing to try and help you all navigate your ways through this ordeal. It can be very confusing and intimidating. Congratulations to all that get in and best of luck in your studies! Remember that you earned this chance through your hard work and perseverance, and it is that same hard work and perseverance that will guide you through the nursing program, too.

eao704, they will take the highest score for each section and the test is free, so you have absolutely nothing to lose by taking the test again. Reading, Math and Science are the most heavily weighted for your overall score, so focus on those sections. Even just a few more points on Math, Science and Reading will give your overall score a decent bump. I bumped by Reading score from 86% to 100%, and my Science score from 75% to 85%. My Math stayed at 96% and Writing stayed at 95%. My overall weighted score jumped from an 86.6% to 93.8%. Also, not sure if they talked about this in your orientation or not, but I remember it being said that Fall is a more competitive semester than Spring. Regardless, it's still best to try and get as high of a score as possible, because you never know what kind of competition you might be up against.