polina11

I did not get an offer the first time I applied/interviewed (with Acuity Adaptable, which wasn't one of my choices). I re-applied for the next cohort and got to interview with my top choice unit (Stroke/Neuro). I interviewed on Th 3/28, I got an acceptance email on Fri 4/5, and the official offer letter came Sun 4/7.

I don't recall the specific questions but even if I did, I'm pretty sure we're not allowed to post them here. I think I've seen them deleted in the past. I would suggest preparing answers for a few specific topics and using those to answer the questions. As long as the topic is vaguely related it will work. So for example, here are some generic questions I always have a specific example/answer for: Why I want to work there What are my top skills/attributes/strengths? you can also use this to answer "Why are you a good candidate for this position?" or work part of this answer into question #1 above; interviewers want to know what you bring to the table, not just want you want from them A mistake I made, how I fixed it, and *what learned from it* to avoid it in the future don't make this a critical mistake like giving Oxy to the wrong pt! mistakes on the job are inevitable and expected, especially as a new grad; what matters is taking ownership and learning a conflict with a worker and how I resolved it & learned from it a time when I gave exceptional care to a patient this can also be used to highlight your strengths & skills if they haven't asked you about them OR you can briefly mention those strengths/skills again to reinforce them in the interviewers minds no matter what your story is, mention how patient SAFETY was part of it General keywords you may want to use, but make sure they make sense and ideally have an example ready to go: ***SAFETY*** (as a new grad, there's a lot you don't know, what efforts will you make to practice safely while you are learning and making mistakes along the way?) compassionate, respectful care prioritization learning opportunity communication skills SBAR/report to healthcare workers therapeutic comm. with patients & family time management & delegation Hope that helps

My best advice for this, or any, interview for a new grad program is to highlight your willingness to learn, to seek guidance when you don't know something, and to keep your patients safe. As a new grad, you're not expected to know the full answer to many things they might ask. It's OK to admit you don't know something. Say what you *do* know about the topic and how you would get the answer if you were a new grad on the floor (e.g. ask the charge nurse, look at the MAR, search the drug guide, etc). Talk about your work ethic, prioritization, critical thinking skills, etc. Most importantly, SAFETY! All those basics you learned in nursing school. Have examples ready to tell of how you demonstrated these basics in the past, even if it was from an unrelated field or from school assignments/projects.

Did anyone get an offer for 4N Neuro/Stroke?

They were mostly typical interview questions about situations I'd experienced. They gave me 1 clinical question about the patient education I would give in a specific circumstance. Pretty basic.

My interview was about 40-45 minutes long.

I had my interview with the Acuity Adaptable unit this morning. Keeping my fingers crossed. Good luck everyone!

1 & 2. First semester our clinicals were in the community and in skilled nursing facilities. You spent half the semester in 1 and half in the other. For the community clinicals, my group would go to different public/low-income housing buildings and do health fairs where we did blood sugar, BP, and other basic assessments. My group was at the Linda Mar Rehab Rehab in Pacifica for the SNF portion. Second semester is Psych and Labor/Delivery. Most of us did psych in a community setting, I think a few people were at SF General for their psych clinical. I was rotating between a short-term residential set-down program, which had zero nurses, and a psych urgent which did have nurses. I got placed at Sequoia for L&D. It was super slow and boring there. My classmates got placements at General, Stanford, UCSF, and I think 1 other hospital. This semester is Med Surg and Peds. My med surg placement is at Mills-Peninsula which I LOVE. Others are placed at St. Francis, UCSF Parnassus, and Sequoia. For Peds, we have students placed at Kaiser Oakland, Kaiser Santa Clara, and UCSF Oakland. My group was supposed to get placed at UCSF Mission Bay but the instructor quit at the last minute so we got placed at Kaiser Oakland instead. 3. Perceptorships will be during the 10-week Summer semester coming up. We were given a survey to complete so we could indicate what our priorities were (specialty, hospital, day or night shift, cohort or individual, etc). I'm not sure when we'll find out our exact placement. It sounds like, except for the cohort option, we will be paired with 1 or 2 nurses and we will have to work with them to figure out a schedule for us to do our preceptorship so we can meet the 135 hr requirement. They told us it is very likely that we will be paired with nurses who work nights or weekends because the hospitals save their day nurses for new hires, but there's still a chance to get days. 4. This is my own personal opinion and may differ from my classmates, but I'm not so upset about the lack of sim lab (anymore). I find my clinical rotations to be far more valuable in learning to do skills because you're doing them in a real setting, with real equipment and real people. Don't get me wrong, I'm very mad that I'm paying so much money and not getting the sim lab opportunity but I'm trying to focus my energy on getting as much as I can out of my clinical time. If you get a good nurse (and I've very rarely had one who wasn't) and you take the initiative to ask to do things, you will learn SO MUCH more and faster. I personally think a good preceptorship is better than an amazing sim lab but it really comes down to how you learn best.

This really depends on a lot of factors that are very individual. I know some of my classmates LOVE their ipads and the notability app. It honestly does look great. But I wouldn't go out an buy an iPad if you don't already have one. Trust me, nursing school is already expensive enough. Don't add unnecessary expenses if you can help it. I already had a Microsoft Surface so I've been using that and the OneNote application to take my notes. It really depends on what you feel most comfortable doing and how you best learn. A big thing I would recommend is to have a place to note down concepts or terms to look up after class and to talk to your classmates if you didn't catch something or didn't understand it during lecture. My cohort is great at googling those kinds of things and sharing the articles or videos they found with the rest of the class in the discord. It's very likely that if you had a question, at least several other people did too.

I can't take the credit for starting it, that was another student. I only jumped in the last 2 weeks or so. Please remember how you felt now and try to help out future students in this forum next year. A big thing I've learned in nursing school is that we students have to lean on each other to get through this experience.

That sounds about right. Don't forget the approximately $2,700 you have to pay for ATI. But it's split into 4 payments, 1 each semester.

I've invited my classmates to hop in here and offer their advice or answers to your questions. Hope you guys don't mind. For those of you who get accepted and choose to attend, you will also get a student-led orientation in addition to your official program orientation, so you will get a lot of info then too.

I have a classmate who was initially pursuing midwifery and has worked as a doula in the Bay Area. I'm not sure if that is still her goal but I can try to connect you with her if you're interested in asking her more specific questions.

One thing you guys haven't asked about yet but I think is important to know is the types of capstone preceptorships you can get in this program. I know several of my classmates wish they had known this before they decided to attend this program. If you are pretty certain that you want to work in labor and delivery or pediatrics or NICU or anything related to children and pregnancy, you should look for a program that allows you to do your capstone in these areas. SFSU does NOT allow it because their capstone is strictly an adult/geriatric med surg class. While it's still possible to get a new grad job in one of these specialities without the capstone, it can be much easier if you did have the specialty capstone.

Technically, the school only requires you to do a drug test in the beginning. Make sure you do not drink too much water before your test so that your results don't come out diluted. I accidentally did that. The school accepted my "dilute negative" result but this semester one of my clinical placements asked me to redo the drug test because they do not accept the dilute result. So just keep that in mind.