Dawdett

I need Micro and that is it for pre req's. I am an LVN, if that makes a difference. Just wondering if anyone knows how long it is to be expected to complete the course work. Any input would be great. I have been seeing stuff posted about completing in 6-9 months. This seems to good to be true.

CONGRATULATIONS!!! and thanks for the reply

Just wondering what I can expect realistically when I graduate.. Any input is greatly appreciated.

JUST TO UPDATE .. we went back to finish and it has started all chaotic again.. but we will suck it up and get a good chuckle out of their incompetence we decided

Just thought I would share the latest fiasco from our school. First of all the reason the hubby and I took this particular program is because it had 6 45 am - 3 pm hours and that meant that our 11 and 9 year old would not need to go to daycare for us to attent together. There were other programs that got much later release times and earlier clinicals. We moved to be close to the school and clinical and sites (and get in district tuition) to ease our stress during the year as well, by cutting travel time. Yesterday morning our Director comes into class and informs us that since she waited until the last minute (last week) to secure our clinical spots for next semester we will be having to travel 30-60 miles to clinical sites and be doing them from 12 in the afternoon till 9. This may be the straw that broke the camels back for us.. for one of us anyway.. We are now scrambling for a way to make this happen for us. I am so angry.

[quote name=: These questons arise.... Are they actually teaching you anything? Are you learning? Would you learn more if you went someplace else? [/quote] question 1 They do teach us some things, yes. We have one classroom instructor, who unfortunately has been out a lot due to illness, who seems to enjoy teaching, is very organized and would bend over backwards to help students. She is always making herself available to those students who are struggling in her classes and even helps with some of the stuff from classes that she is not teaching currently. She has also been very ill and I believe that is why she is teaching now, though I don't know this for sure. We also have a clinical instructor who for all her faults (she is a complete mess, literally, very unkempt) she is very hands on and though she does not always follow proper procedure on her part she is very good at finding learning experiences for her students in the clinical setting. question 2 My hubby has a BS in psych and has taken many of the science pre req's for the BSN program so he had a pretty good base knowledge going into the program. I have him for a tutor, so I am blessed. But yes essentially we are learning. More from our own attempts though than classroom instruction. Here is an example : in the beginning of the semester we had 3 weeks (approx 10 hours of class lecture and 40 hours of clinical time in the lab)of lecture over positioning patients, baths, oral care, and ADL's that was 2 chapters in our text- in the end of the semester when we had some 5 chapters to go over regarding oxygenation and airway management we had 2 hours lecture and 30 minutes in the lab with her showing us an oral airway and she also through in some IV stuff since we had spent no time on that. For the most part on the oxygen and airway stuff she just said "you will learn this on the job". i think I would rather chance learning to give a bath than learning how to suction or prevent aspiration etc. The test was difficult for most people and the avg score of the class was like a 70. Our patients may die if they have a need for oxygen or aspirate but we are bath giving fools.. :) question 3 I thought perhaps until I posted this :) I think perhaps the difficult thing about LVN school is not so much that it is an amazingly large amount of information in a short time but that you have that and also have to overcome the situation of incompetent nursing instructors. We are definetly not dropping out though :) .. been to far at this point..

This is the case with our school. On avg 35 students start and only around 15 graduate. They use a practice board to eliminate students at the very end. They have what they refer to as a clinical U and once the practice boards have been taken they start handing out clinical U's - deserved or undeserved - to those who do not fair well on the practice exam. They don't come right out and say this though, this is information I have gotten from previous graduating class members. I am not concerned as I am fortunate enough to test fairly well. However, it angers me because there are people in our class that I know in the end will not make it because they either do not have the previous educational background, or they are unable to self teach. In the end that is what it boils down to at our school. It is a self taught program with the assistance of instructors who will most likely misinform you (though their misinformation usually makes it's way to the test). Graduation cannot be soon enough :)

Reading this was like listening to someone who had been eavesdropping on my previous conversations about school. I swear you said almost exactly the way I did. AMEN! I still have 8 months to go, (graduate in Aug. 06) and I dread every minute of it really, but I will not allow them to make me quit. However, I must admit if we had not already invested so much time and money into this both of us would have made the decision to just go for our BSN. If I were ever to be asked if it were worth it to go straight for the LVN/LPN and work your way thru the rest I would say "NO!, unless you only want to be an LPN then don't go thru the program it is way to frustrating and if you are not able to self teach you will not make it." I say that last part because we have seen so many be lost just because of the incomptent teaching ability of our instructors.

My hubby and I are attending an LVN program together, this is the last couple weeks of our first semester - 2 more to go. We are both experiencing so much frustration that we have at many times considered dropping out. Not due to grades as we are both at the top of our class as far as that goes, but due to the instructors. We have a few instructors all of which are completely disorganized, don't communicate with each other, catty, and there seems to be no accountability. We spend day after day literally wasting time by waiting on instructors to arrive (often more then 15 minutes late to class), then waiting for them to figure out what we are doing today, then once one of them figures out what we are doing the other one comes along and gets on to someone for doing it that way and then we have to waste some more time for the instructors to tell us how we all never listen, are never organized, and need to do better. One instructor on occassion looses her temper and berates the students in front of each other telling them things like 'you are going to be a horrible nurse', 'if it were up to me i would kick you out'. OH and then there is the testing. We have never tested when we were supposed to, things are always changed at the last minute, and when you get the test there is a high likelihood that you will look on the bottom and see it is a test from 1997 and does not have any information from your current materials. ALL the materials are old. We paid for a syllabus that I swear is dated on most worksheets, study guides, and notes.. before 2001. It is insane the amount of chaos we have to deal with on a daily basis, simply because the instructors have no idea what they are doing, or what day it is for that matter. And if that is not enough most of them have the attitude that LVN school is just hard and we are just not coping well if we complain .. we need to be more flexible they say.. I am just wondering is this the norm for LVN schools. I mean I could kinda see why, as the pay is not lucrative in teaching therefore you are not likely to get a lot of stellar instructors. BUT does it get better in the BSN program.

My hubby and I are attending an LVN program together, this is the last couple weeks of our first semester - 2 more to go. We are both experiencing so much frustration that we have at many times considered dropping out. Not due to grades as we are both at the top of our class as far as that goes, but due to the instructors. We have a few instructors all of which are completely disorganized, don't communicate with each other, catty, and there seems to be no accountability. We spend day after day literally wasting time by waiting on instructors to arrive (often more then 15 minutes late to class), then waiting for them to figure out what we are doing today, then once one of them figures out what we are doing the other one comes along and gets on to someone for doing it that way and then we have to waste some more time for the instructors to tell us how we all never listen, are never organized, and need to do better. One instructor on occassion looses her temper and berates the students in front of each other telling them things like 'you are going to be a horrible nurse', 'if it were up to me i would kick you out'. OH and then there is the testing. We have never tested when we were supposed to, things are always changed at the last minute, and when you get the test there is a high likelihood that you will look on the bottom and see it is a test from 1997 and does not have any information from your current materials. ALL the materials are old. We paid for a syllabus that I swear is dated on most worksheets, study guides, and notes.. before 2001. It is insane the amount of chaos we have to deal with on a daily basis, simply because the instructors have no idea what they are doing, or what day it is for that matter. And if that is not enough most of them have the attitude that LVN school is just hard and we are just not coping well if we complain .. we need to be more flexible they say.. I am just wondering is this the norm for LVN schools. I mean I could kinda see why, as the pay is not lucrative in teaching therefore you are not likely to get a lot of stellar instructors. BUT does it get better in the BSN program.

I am wondering about the difficulty of admission into the UT Tyler BSN program and if it is offered thru Longview Extension campus .. Thanks

Thanks for all the great feedback.. very much appreciated

Just wondering if someone can give more of an understanding of how clinicals go in the program. Do you get paid for clinicals? Did many of you have to relocate for them? I have read a couple of things on the website for a program I interested in and a couple of things intimidate me a bit.. wondering if anyone can allieviate my fears lol .. here are the sentences that worry me most : "Clinical students (RRNAs) are scheduled 5 shifts per week on the average. Shifts are typically longer than 8 hours. RRNAs are on a rotating call schedule and should expect to work 40-70 hours per week on the average." and "These facilities may not be in the same geographical location as the student's primary training facility, thereby, requiring the student to relocate for the length of the specialty rotation - usually one to two months." Still very much in the research phase of this option .. but any response would be welcome Thanks

I guess what I am asking is "How old is too old?" ... I have looked at some stat's and it is a fairly small percentage of students who are over 40 that take the CRNA route ...I mean I know there is not supposed to be age discrimination and all .. but will a 45 year old man graduating from the CRNA program have a good future in this field ... any response welcome..