avi8tor69

You can of course live in La La land and pretend that it doesn't exist. That is the harsh reality of today's nursing. New grads especially in California face a near 60 % unemployment. No hospital is hiring foreign educated nurses. That is a fact. Where I work we had a new grad opening, 9 positions over 700 applied. I suspect the situation is similar in other hospitals. Like I said, you can pretend this isn't happening and give false hope or you could get off your high horse. Or better yet why don't you dispute what I said about the employment situation. I am not shooting down the hopes of others, I am merely laying out what is out there, and what is out there is harsh. It is not a federal crime to not hire applicants with a foreign education. In addition, where did I say employers should hire on the basis of gender and race. You made that up yourself. Hiring locally trained nurses is a preference by employers. Get your facts straight or keep your erroneous opinions to yourself.

It's pretty much the same thing at MC. You need to pass a medication test with a 90% (2 x tries) or you are out. Exams are 4 times per 8 weeks with a cumulative final. Care plans are one every 8 weeks but 35 pages long. The instructors are fantastic but they do expect students to know their material when they are in clinical. The program is very organized and the staff are great. They have a new building with a skills lab that is top notch. But as with all nursing programs, MC's program is very difficult. The exams are hard and becomes even harder as you move from semester to semester. But like someone said, they have a 100% NCLEX passing rate. BTW I graduated from VC 16 years ago.

Are you a US citizen or legal immigrant? If not don't waste your time with applying to take the NCLEX. Even dual citizens would did nursing school in the Phil will find it very difficult to find a hospital job. In my hospital we have a new grad program. 9 positions opened, over 700 applicants. My friend in HR told me they don't entertain foreign graduates regardless of citizenship. Employers hold the card now.

I would suggest you read the threads by a poster named steppybay. Very informative. It seems to me you do not have a clue to what the issues Filipino/foreign graduates are facing. They are daunting. It's not the length of time it will take you to finish medsurge. The issue is there are no nursing programs offering those subjects here in California. And you have to take those classes here in Ca.

Do you have a SSN? (Social Security Number) or a you a US citizen or legal immigrant. If you are neither of the above, do not waste your time and money to sit to take the NCLEX. Even if the BON lets you take the NCLEX, as steppybay said, it will not issue you a license. Even if in the remote chance they do issue you a license without an SSN, no hospital will hire you. SSN is needed for employment. Hospitals will run a background check on you and if you don't have a social security number, your application to work will be tossed in the trash bin.

Don't be devastated. You have experience and you know in your heart you are a safe and competent nurse. Just take the damn test and be over with it. Act and deal with the cards you are dealt with. Don't sit around and fret. The whole thing sucks but it is not the end of the world. It is a terrible setback and injustice but to fret and dwell on it will not lead you anywhere. Don't let this injustice prevent you from what you dream to be.

First make sure your clinical was taken concurrently with theory. Meaning If you had your theory OB in the lets say the 1st quarter of 2012, your clinical OB should be in the same time period not months or years after. If they weren't taken at the same time, you will be facing the same issues Phil grads are facing. CABON will not let you take the NCLEX if the theory and clinical weren't taken concurrently.

In California if you go private school it can go from 50k to 100K. But if you go public it can go from anywhere between $2K to 4$k. The $2k is ADN from a community college. I think there is a tendency to forget that the whole nursing thing is somewhere between 3 to 4 years. 1.5 - 2 years for prereqs and 2 years of pure nursing (ADN) or 3 years (BSN).

Inna_vela I have to call you out on this. First do your homework. With BON posting their requirement online, there should be no excuse for not knowing what you applied for. Second, of course the BON will take your money and they have a right to do so. Once you send in your application, it will be processed by the staff at BON. You know these employees get paid. Every application they received and process takes x amount of man hours which cost us taxpayers. The BON is funded by our tax dollars to provide service to us. So you over there in another country complaining about the non refundable fees should take a deep breath and see the big picture.

If you can get by without working I would highly recommend you try out not working in the first semester and get a feel for the workload. If you think it is doable and you can handle the pressure (pressure like you have never known) then by all means go ahead. Nursing school is tough. Your schedule is all over the place once you are in nursing school.

You pretty much have the same problem as nurses from the Philippines have. Username Steppybay has a pretty good insight to this issue. Try searching her username and you will get a lot of threads pertaining to this matter.

Doable but highly not recommended. Nursing schools own you for the nest 2 or 3 years. Clinicals will start fairly early and they may only let you miss one clinical (with one make up day). That's how I remember it to be.

Dmrh, Heed what steppybay has posted. She is 100 % on top of this.

My post was based in my area. LPNs come in as 2nd semester student. Since in my area, schools have dropped the lottery system and adopted points/merit system, they haven't had the level of drop out/failures that they had when they were a lottery system, hence the 1 or 2 spots available per funding. They also have no waiting list since every applicant must submit an application every year, but it also means that you will be competing with the 4.0 applicants. The schools were able to get 95 % to 100 % NCLEX passing when they adopted the new system.

If you go the LVN route and if you go private the program cost range from $25k to $35K ( I could very well be wrong). If you go public like a community college LVN program the cost is $2-3k but there will be a long waiting list or the requirements to get in are stiff. Its always a tad easier to go private but you must be willing to pay. Once you finish the LVN program you can attempt to bridge to the RN (ADN) program. This is where it gets tricky. The slots available for LVN bridging to RN is very very small. Something like 1 - 3. But mostly it is just 1 available slot per semester with 100-200 applicants. If you are the lucky one and gets accepted you will start second semester. You get to only skip one semester. So you will still do 1.5 years of nursing school. If you go BSN add another 1.5 years. Now if you come in as a first semester student and you have fantastic grades your chances of getting in will be slightly better. There may be 40-50 available slots for the first semester and something like 400 applicants. The chances of getting in is slightly better.

Like what the previous posters said study hard and stay here in the US. If you are in California look at community colleges that offer nursing programs. It will be easier to get a job if you were educated and did clinicals here. There are a number of hospitals here in California that offer new grad positions especially to those that did their clinicals at those hospitals. Lastly if you do the community college route it would be infinitely cheaper than going to the Philippines. Average cost of for community college programs range between $3000-5000 dollars spread over the 3-4 years you it will take you from the first general ed class to the actual nursing program. But you do need to get almost perfect grades otherwise your chances of getting accepted into a competitive program will be slim.

If the theory and clinical were taken concurrently then he can apply. But based on the replies here there is a 99% chance his clinical was not concurrently taken. Ca BON will not allow any applicant to sit for the NCLEX if the clinical is not concurrent.

SSN = Social Security Number. SSN is only issued to United States citizens and legal immigrants. If you are not a US citizen or legal immigrant or on a valid work visa you WILL NOT get an SSN. The SSN is our "number". Again it is only issued to Americans, legal immigrants and those with work visas. If you are a citizen of the Philippines or any other country, you will not get one ever. So be wary of those who promise help for a fee.

Let me clarify that because that is not the complete picture. Just a simple background, I graduated here in California in 1997 and my husband will be graduating this year. AS an LVN to RN student, you go in as a 2nd semester student. The class is cohort. You will have theory and clinical. You have to pass both in order to move on the next phase. In clinical, as a second semester student in med surge, you will be expected to know your stuff. You will have between 1 - 2 student and you will be managing your patients. You will be hands on, vitals, head to toe, bed bath and meds. PO and IV. You will do procedures too like foleys, G tube, N g tube etc. You will be graded and your instructor will be watching over you. One small mistake boom you loose points. You make X amount of same mistakes you will be kicked out of the program. As a student you come in at 6 am, pick two patients, get their H & P, diagnostics test results, current and previous lab results (chem/cbc), get report from the RN and prepare an oral report for your meds (class/purpose/patho/side effects/safe dose etc). Usually one patient will have a minimum of 10 meds and you have to be ready before 8am. You are so busy you dont have time to pee. Seriously, its super stressful. Every second you spend with the instructor is like an hour being in the hot seat. In surgery you do nothing but observe. Surgical rotation is more of giving you an idea/exposure thats all. The focus here is med surge. They want you to be able to take care of 6 patients safely and efficiently by the end of the semester.

if you are in California are you aware of the concurrency issues?

Congrats!! Oncology is tough so hats off to you.

Thank you delacruzdiane22 for that post. I too right off the bat smelled something fishy about socalnurses88's claims. The I can't tell you the school's name was simply too preposterous. Socalnurse88 I hope you correct my perception of you by proving me wrong. I can tell you this though, no real ie. accredited "university" would ask its student to keep its program offering a secret. That simply doesn't happen in real life. The legal implications alone would prevent something like that from happening.

My friend's cousin is aware of the advance placement option. However, she was told offrecord to the school that she will be applying to prioritizes former students who did previously passed for.their advance placement slots. Those slots are more like 1 to 3 with a lot of applicants. She has a better shot starting out from the beginning. BTW students go in as a cohort. If a student flunks a class, that student will be out of the program.

If you take the courses here in CA you should be good to go. The only and major problem is, no accredited nursing school will let you take a few classes here and there. You have to apply to their program but before you do that you have to meet the stiff prerequisites. My friend's cousin graduated in the Philippines recently (2012) and ran into the same issues. Needless to say, she decided, after a heartbreaking realization that her nursing degree from the Philippines was worthless, and will redo the whole thing over. She is taking Anatomy and Physiology ( I think) right now and will apply to the ADN program in our local community college (no waiting period - admission criteria based on GPA) once she is done. Nursing counselor said if she get good grades and high TEAS V score, she has a good chance to get into their program.

6 years? Yikes. But the tuition out of state is significantly higher than a local cc here in california. Out of state would be probably around 30k and at $500 per month it would take you 5 years to complete. But yeah 6 years is way too long.