Katyvent7

Hello all. I am hoping to get some insight from some current students or recent graduates from the MSN programs at Vanderbilt and Georgetown. I am looking at Vanderbilt's ENP (dual ACNP/FNP) program. I was told by admissions that as of mid June there were still slots left in the August cohort for this program. I was a late applicant and do not have an answer yet. I don't see much recent activity on the boards for their school. Why are there still slots this late? Is it a good program? Maybe not in high demand? I am also looking at Georgetown's ACNP program. I received an acceptance letter on Saturday! :) There is not much recent activity on these boards for Georgetown, but a lot of older negative discussion on the school and program and some threads about the FNP program. If there is anyone currently enrolled or recent grad who could provide some insight, I would appreciate it. I know that for every one person complaining there are probably many who had a fine experience. Vanderbilt is my first choice due to the somewhat lower price and dual board option, even though it is eight hours away instead of four. I have been in the ER for three years, also floating to ICU; I have CEN and CCRN certs. I also have ten years of experience as a paramedic. Do you feel that you made the right choice with the school? Would you make the same decision again? How was/is the precepting experience? What problems have you had?

I am working on my MSN application for the Vanderbilt ENP program. I have written my statement of purpose and am trying to tackle the short essay questions. I am having some minor difficulty interpreting exactly what kind of answer to provide on two of them. 1. What is your concept of nursing? Why do you want to become an advanced practice nurse? I can answer the why part quite easily. But I am not sure I understand "concept of nursing" portion. Is this something specific? I have asked Dr. Google, but I am not finding anything specific or consistent. I understand nursing concepts in terms of educational objectives and I am familiar with the different scholarly theories and models of nursing. Neither of those seems right. Is this just another way of asking, "What does nursing mean to you?" Or is there something more specific I am missing? 2. What is your understanding of the advanced practice role in your selected specialty? Are they asking if I know what emergency nurse practitioners do? Should I just describe the ENP role and cite some sources? Or does it seem like they are they looking for personal experience based opinion? The prompts seem very short and I don't want my application put aside because I didn't provide the desired information. Any additional insights or opinions are much appreciated.

I am happy to say I just passed my CCRN exam yesterday. I wanted to post a bit about it for folks looking to take it soon. My background is ER/MICU with previous experience as a paramedic. I work in a small community hospital which does not do invasive cardiology, neurology, or trauma services. I do take care of some of these types of patients in the ER setting, but only for a short time until we can transfer them. Most of our MICU patients are DKA, sepsis, ARDS, etc. My biggest challenge was probably the same for nurse who work in sub-specialty ICU's like cardiothoracic or trauma. There are exam questions about disease processes, procedures, and monitoring equipment that you simply don't see unless you float around in several ICU settings or have a strong MICU background at a large hospital. There is also very heavy physiology component to the test. No one taking this exam is a new grad, so seasoned nurses may struggle to revisit that stuff, unless you are nursing faculty that teaches those topics. I used the ACCN Essentials of Critical Care Nursing textbook over a few months to beef up my base knowledge. I found it was a lot of information and I needed something more compact to review in the last few weeks. I did Laura Gasparis Vonfrolio's online review, which involved me listening to her lectures and taking practice tests. I listed to cardiac and respiratory a couple of times since they made up the biggest exam portion. The review course came with Baron's CCRN exam book, so I read the review sections for each topic and took the tests. Two days before the exam I used Adult CCRN Certification Review: Think in Questions Learn in Rationale for the topics I did the worst in on the practice exams. My actual exam scores were above 90% in all topics except for the Synergy Model for Patient Care section. Now having taken the test, here is my 20-20 hindsight: 1. I would have spent a lot less time with the actual textbook. I would have used it for respiratory and cardiac, but that is all. 2. More time studying the Synergy content. It made up a lot of the test. If you are not a strong patho person, you could benefit by getting more of these questions in the bag. The information is there, I just didn't review it much. 3. I would have spent less time studying EKGs and rhythm strips, the content was simply not there. 4. I would have used the Adult CCRN Certification Review: Think in Questions Learn in Rationale a lot more and a lot sooner. 5. Laura Gasparis Vonfrolio's review was absolutely invaluable, but costs $350. Wish I could went in the with some colleagues and shared the videos, but I would not do without it. It won't make you pass the exam if you don't have the general knowledge base, but it helps you pick out the little obscure things you may have skimmed over. 6. Less time studying many types of hemodynamic values and all the factors that change them, more on just CO, CVP, and PAOP. 7. I am glad for all the practice questions, both from the online review and Baron's. Some of the questions on the test were word for word from the book. A few other points: Review restrictive cardiomyopathy, The reviews focus on hypertropic and dilated, neither were on the exam. Be sure you know the AV conduction abnormalities for each type of MI. Be able to identify the artery and area of the heart based on what leads show ST changes. Know what poor R wave progression is and what it means physiologically. Know SIADH, DI, and DKA inside out and upside down. Understand your trigger points for patients requiring intubation, such as the PC02 levels. Review the pulmonary function testing associated with asthma and what the values mean. Know how an IABP functions (very basically) and what it does (increased cardiac output, increased coronary blood flow, reduced afterload). Know when beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, and positive inotropes are contraindicated. You will be able to eliminate several answer choices for many cardiac questions just knowing this. Hope this helps anyone else working on test prep now. I will be frank, it was harder than CEN, NCLEX, and Paramedic exams. You cannot wing it, but you can pass it with a well structured study plan.

The end of my first semester of an ABSN is approaching and I am seriously reconsidering this program and perhaps even the entire profession. I am finding the nursing instructors and a lot of the material to be totally useless. It is Concepts of Professional Practice that is so troublesome. I have a Master of Science in Physiology and a Bachelor of Science in Emergency Medical Care. I have been in rigorous academic programs before. I am not stupid and I believe I have a pretty good knowledge of the human body/disease process. I have been a paramedic for eight years and a community college adjunct instructor for five. I am hoping to become a nurse practitioner because as a paramedic there is very little opportunity for any career advancement. In this Concepts of Professional Practice, which basically a fundamentals of nursing class, it seems that none of what I study is on the exams. I have tried the textbook, the lectures, study groups and everything. But without exception the test comes around and it seems like the test was taken from another class or another school. I am doing ok in pathophysiology and health assessment. It is not easy, but it is simpler in terms of, if I pay attention in class, take notes, read the chapters, and study the material I can do well. But in this class I don't know what else to do. There also seems to be complete and total lack of consistency in practical skills evaluations. Clinical skills evaluations are something I have done as an instructor for many years, and I find it very disturbing to see one student pass a station and the next student failed for doing the exact same thing. I have tried talking to my professor and she frankly was nothing but condescending. She refers to everything as "just a guideline." In many cases she doesn't seem to know the answer herself. She makes outlandish errors in presenting clinical information which could be harmful for my classmates because they don't know any better. We never even had a lecture on careplans. We were basically given a case told to figure it out ourselves. The professor graded it extremely harshy despite the fact we had absolutely no instruction. It seems like something that unique and complex would warrant some instruction. We also didn't get a single lecture on drug dosage and drug calculations, but we had to pass a 25 question exam on the subject to pass the class. It seems like so much of this program is unnecessarily esoteric. The instructors, some more than others, seem to pride themselves on complicating even the simplest information as much as possible. Frankly, the concept of this nursing diagnosis seems insulting to my intelligence as student. So many of the faculty seem to be catty for no apparent reason and have a chip on their shoulders the size of Texas. Is this typical? Did I pick a bad program? What should I do?