TraumaRN_1

I know most of you are well into the program, but for anyone who is reading this and considering going to Spring Arbor University— please do not go. I know many people in my cohort that have had problems with the university and regret going. You have to find clinical sites yourself, which isn’t rare, but they offer no help to you if you cannot find one. If you cannot find one my the semester start date, you cannot do clinical hours until the next semester (in 6 months) and then they make you stop your online classes that whole time. Some people found preceptors but didn’t have their sites approved from the nursing office in time and were delayed for clinicals. Everything you do for clinical has to be approved, but the nursing office doesn’t answer their emails. When they do, it takes 2 emails and they respond with hostility and tell you that you should already know the answer or they don’t answer all of your questions. Getting something approved through the office takes multiple months— I am not exaggerating. I wrote a longer reply in another allnurses thread, so I won’t explain everything here.. but look for that. and don’t just believe me. Search allnurses for others that have gone to this school and you will see what I’m talking about

I do not usually post things online, but I feel VERY strongly about this. Please do not go to this school. If I could prevent just one person from going to this school, it would make me feel better after suffering from this horrendous university. They are accredited by the CCNE, however, they do not uphold the standards set by the CCNE. They do not abide by the Sawyer initiative and they change the structure of their program as they go. Halfway through the program, they added new requirements which cost me an extra $500. They also changed the structure of the program so in the second year of school I was not able to take my didactic courses for 6 months if I could not find a clinical. That set me back 6 months in my schooling and they told me 1 week before classes started. Finding clinical sites is very very difficult with this school because most clinics already have affiliations with the top 5 schools in the state. Creating an affiliation with a new school is a legal issue, so most clinics are not willing to do that. For larger chain clinics, the affiliation process can take 3-6 months (I only chose family owned clinics for this reason). Then once you submit your paperwork to the nursing office, they take forever to approve it. A lot of people got held up from starting clinical on time because their paperwork was not approved yet. Communicating with the nursing office is very frustrating. They do not respond to emails. I usually have to send a second email before I receive a response back and that takes multiple weeks. Then, they don’t answer all of my questions in their response so the email correspondence continues. They do not answer their phones or return phone calls, so it is very very frustrating that it takes weeks-months to receive an emailed answer. Regarding clinical sites, different people in the nursing office will tell you different information about requirements. They will also email back “this information was discussed at residency” after waiting weeks to receive an email answer from them. The nursing office is hostile to their students and publicly shamed one student during residency. They picked apart her email and told us it was unprofessional and that she needed to check her grammar before she hit send. The student was frustrated with changing rules and was respectfully addressing her issues. But the nursing office displayed the email from a projector and picked it apart. They say they are a Christian university but as a believer myself, I am sad and frustrated about their condemning, impatient, inflexible, unforgiving behavior. Now, if you read all of this and ignore it because it sounds awesome to take one seven-week class at a time, that’s exactly what I did. So I get it. I didn’t learn anything from the classes, but that’s fine with me because I’m cool with self learning on my own. But the process of clinical rotations and necessary coorospondecne with the nursing office for clinical will make you crazy. I am personally 1 year behind in clinical because of it—meaning my graduation has been delayed that long. **also as a note, when they tell you the program is only 2 1/2 years long, that is the timeline if you double up on clinical hours (which wouldn’t have been possible working full time). If you do one clinical site per semester, the program takes 3 1/2 years. Doubling up on clinical hours is not always possible bc you have to request special permission from the nursing office to get approved for that. read all of these other people’s posts please. There is a reason they are so adamant about not going to this university