Sgates99

I'm a recent new grad (graduated this past May) and just started working this September. I will be coming off of orientation at the end of this week and I feel a bit odd about it? Like I know that its very common to be nervous about being "on your own"... but also I just don't know where I stand? I'll be just completing my first 12 weeks at my job - I work on a cardiac med surg/ that takes step down patients as well. My hospital is fairly small as our ICU only has 12 beds so a lot of the time our step down patients are fairly acute... I just worry about the things I don't know... the saying you don't know what you don't know? I worry that I haven't picked up on the things that I missed in school (a lot since it was pandemic nursing school and my program is now under academic warning) I know I should really sit down with my manager since communication about preparedness hasn't really been a thing... but I'm just wondering if this is normal or not?

I absolutely feel you! I'm a recent new grad as well- I'm just getting off of orientation by the end of this week and I'm getting nervous. It's been really hard adjusting to nights. I'm also on a rotating day and night schedule and it has really sucked trying to connect with my relationships/friends/family when time is so precious. I'm still learning the balance.... but hoping that it comes more naturally. I've really been trying to take advantage of the longer stretches of time I have off - as well as just do something simple that makes me happy every day.

Hi - My name is Sarah and I just graduated from MCPHS this past Spring (I have been a student there since 2018) however, I switched my major halfway through and graduated with my BSN this May. I personally did not really enjoy the education I received there. The nursing department has been struggling with communication and preparedness for awhile. Many courses were taught drastically different from each other and while I did have a few solid professors I felt that some of the courses either were not helpful (IE a waste of time we could have spent learning content that would have been more applicable to practice) or were not taught well. Any success I had was from my own studying and additional resources that I used rather than from my professors. The clinical placement team was a mess, and did not place us all (mindful we were affected by covid, but other schools had all of their placements)..... In addition to this, the previous cohort of students from 2021 had a very low passing score on the NCLEX and the program has been flagged for "approval but with warning status" = probation essentially. I hope that they get their act together and fix the communication problems and align the content better with the NCLEX/ practice. I did not enjoy the campus life there either. I went in fully knowing that it was a very academically oriented school, but there was little to no campus life at all and this was discouraging. My class was in the middle of COVID so socalization between our cohort was hard. As a whole I felt fairly divided as our cohort formed small groups, but never really operated as a whole. If you haven't accepted already I would choose a different program. If you have then I recommend utilizing every opportunity and resource that you get while you are in the program. Visit with your professors in person and make strong connections (things I felt were lacking for me). I would try and engage with individuals outside of our immediate school and participate in the Colleges of Fenway (COF) intermurals, events, sports - whatever you are interested in. During your prereq time period you can cross register at the other colleges too so maybe consider this to help you reach out to others and do something new or exciting because once you enter the professional phase of your program you will not have free time/ opportunities to do so. Wishing you the best of luck, I hope I didn't scare you with this post. I just wanted to be truthful to my experiences as a student there.

I am in a very unique situation. I am just entering nursing school and unfortunately due to the spread of the virus, all of my plans have been changed/moved around. To start this complicated story we have to look back a few years ago as I was a high school student trying to figure out what schools I wanted to apply to for undergrad. I have always had a passion for medicine and science. I have had the goal of going to medical school for years, so after many hours of decision making, I choose to go to a college in Boston (Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences - MCPHS University). I entered as a pre-med student in 2018 and up until recently, I have continued my plan to go to medical school. This past fall I worked as an EMT for a very short period of time for a private company (I barely made it through my full orientation - around 3 months) and found that I really did not love the prehospital setting of medicine. There were a lot of physical demands, and I was not really able to meet up with them nor was able to meet the mental demands of the job AND continue to be full-time student at my university. From this, I decided after a lot of worrying and almost identity crisis that I was not cut out for being an EMT then how was medical school going to go for me? I knew that if I really wanted to I could get through medical school, but for my own personal priorities and ideals of work-life balance I started to realize that although I told myself I'd be okay working 80+ hours a week, I began to realize that if I wanted to keep my own personal ideals and compete for the two most difficult subspecialties (pediatrics and surgery) - not putting in my A game and working even more hours beyond the 80+ workload that these individuals work, is just an injustice to patients and to my coworkers. So after lots and lots of self-discovery, I started to turn to alternatives. For a long time, people have asked me why I don't consider nursing. For the most part of my life, I have been deadset on that goal of becoming a pediatric surgeon. However now that I am becoming older and I am able to understand my own personal values more, understand my success as an undergraduate candidate (my GPA isn't too hot right now as I've taken competitive advanced science courses designed for medical school admissions) and understand the WIDE scope of practice nursing has, I've turned around to the idea. So now here I am, (currently, a 2nd-year biology undergraduate student trying to transition into my school's nursing program. I will "lose a year" of my education, by entering this fall as a 2nd-year student, however, I actually graduate on my anticipated graduation date due to my school having an accelerated nursing program. But now with this virus in full force, it has caused a significant impact on my life. I planned on completing the TEAS exam, finishing my nursing program interview and meeting with many advisors of mine to confirm the track I've decided to change to.... however COVID decided we would do this differently. I was on my Spring break the week of March 9th. I have family in San Diego (now remember I'm from Boston (close to a 7-hour flight). It's always been a tradition for me to spend my Spring break out here in San Diego... At this point I was aware of the impacts the virus was having on the country, however I was not ready for my university to entirely shut down and enforce students to move out of the dorms. My residence life at my university isn't the best and very few students actually live on campus (as on-campus housing is sporifice). The premise was the university wanted us out in the next 5 days, and by the time all the information was given to us about the university switching to online classes and that my dorm was closing (and requiring move out) the residence life decided to immediately leave the office right after they sent the email. Likely to avoid having a swarm of messages, however that did not work for me. I had no information about the status of my stuff in my on-campus apartment. Two individuals of my family are considered high-risk individuals for Covid19 so we needed to make decisions quickly. After so long discussion on the status of domestic travel, my risk for flying to and from Boston to San Diego we ultimately decided that it was best to have me fly out as soon as possible and to pack up my entire apartment and then turn around and fly back to San Diego to finish this semester online with my family here. So here I found myself booking a flight on the way to the airport. I managed to get a seat on that ongoing red-eye flying back to Boston that night (weds march 11th). I landed in Boston very early in the morning. Made it home to my apartment (had many difficult discussions with public safety on why I was back early and residency life was not good at communicating with them so it was a difficult process), either way, I got access to my apartment because I had left my keys in my rush to fly out to Boston (of course I did...) luckily my roommate had stayed home during Spring break! So we chatted for a bit, and then I was too hyped to back to sleep so I started packing my ENTIRE apartment. I got a few hours of sleep later on that morning as the adrenaline left me. I could only afford 3 hours of sleep as I needed to continue to plan out my move, meaning I needed to get a storage unit for my stuff, figure out what residence life was doing and arrange for a close friend of mine to come pick up all my stuff that I would pack as my parents wanted me in Boston for as little time as possible and my designated check out time from my apartment wasn't until Monday (which would significantly increase my exposure and really affect my family if I brought the virus back to them...) So I had my return flight for the next morning (Friday march 13th). Giving me basically a little more than 24 hours to pack my entire apartment. Long story short, I did all the tasks and coordinating I needed to do, I packed the entire night. I went to bed on my bare mattress at 4:30 am when I had finally finished... and had to wake up at 6 am for my flight back to San Diego. I finalized all my plans for my friend to pick up all the boxes of my stuff that had been pilled into my living room... and made my way back to the airport to return to my family. I flew home after sleeping a total of 5 hours over a period of 48 hours, and finally got some real food and crashed at my family's house and slept for 18 straight hours. It is likely one of the craziest experiences I've ever had. Surprisingly I was not that jetlagged! One positive thing to come out of this experience. Overall since then, I made sure to handle the hassel with residence life (again) and making sure the move my friends made with my stuff to the storage unit was smooth. (Which it was!). Now I am finishing my semester out here and having to deal with the effects of not being in person to deal with this transition of my major.... It has been an interesting process to say the least, I'd say that I have a thread of emails with my nursing dean that must be at least 40 emails long. There is a lot up in the air now, as I still need to complete some pre-requisites that I am missing and need to make up to enter in the nursing program. Overall I now need to take A&P 1 and 2 online. Mostly as I am unsure about the status of our Summer semesters and I do not want to fly back to Boston and deal with all this hassel again for temporary housing situations, plus the tuition rate for Summer courses at my university is INSANE, it would cost me around 10k to take these 2 courses.... Overall, I'd like to think I'm a pretty resilient person. I have gone through many crazy things, and will continue to do so for the rest of my life (I'm hoping this trait will make me successful as an RN someday!) I have basically had to be my own advisor now in deciding course registrations for the fall and fitting in all my last minute pre-reqs I need before I start my professional years. I give so many props to the nurses who are actively dealing with this horrible pandemic, I am sending love and I wish there was more I could do to help, but for now I will do my civil part and continue to social distance (plus California has been on lock-down for awhile). Keep on kicking on, you guys are the real bad-asses.

I'm going to be a 2nd year nursing student (who is transitioning from a previous program within my university, into the nursing program) I do not start the nursing program officially until Spring of 2020 (This is the accelerated 3 - year BSN program MCPHS University)... anyways I am looking to make up the prerequisites that are required for our professional years and I need to find online courses for both Anatomy and Physiology 1 and 2. Ideally, I'd like to complete these over the Summer (maybe starting anytime from May to August) I'm brand new to this site, but I'm looking for advice! Has anyone taken A&P online before? It needs to be 4 credits for each course and they need to have a lab component..... (It likely doesn't matter how it's broken up, it just needs to be overall 4 credits and include a lab)