Guest867093

Hi everyone, I just came across this post when browsing allnurses. I'm in my last semester of the PMHNP program at MGHI IHP and thought I would share a little bit about my experience in the program. Overall it's been a good experience, but I do wish I had a bit more realistic idea about the psych clinical placements would be like back when I was applying. The psych track in my class only has about 25 students, but they seem to have a very hard time finding placements. I was initially excited to have clinical sites at places like Mclean or MGH inpatient psych units, but unfortunately was never placed in any teaching hospital settings. I know some students have had some really cool clinical experiences (like a semester on the addictions consult team (ACT) at MGH, or a semester somewhere at Mclean), but some of us have had a harder time getting placements we were really interested in. As an example, I was interested in child/adolescent psych coming in, but haven't had any opportunities with this population in a psych NP student capacity. They do have to give everyone some hours in each age group for licensing purposes, but it looks like I'll just have a few days shadowing in peds psych here and there. Definitely don't want to deter anyone from the program, but just thought I would share my experience for those applying to the DEN psych track who may be considering various schools. Good luck to everyone applying!

After college I enrolled in an ivy league post-bac premed program, but decided to switch to pre-nursing this year. My enrollment for the program ends this semester (and since I am no longer premed I cannot extend it) so I'll be taking the remaining nursing pre-reqs at a state school university (satellite campus) in PA. From the post-bac I have a C in chem, and a B- in bio. I'm also in micro this semester. I really want to attend a direct entry NP program. I know I need high grades in the rest of my-prereq's, and want to get experience shadowing NP's (all my shadowing/research/work/volunteer experience is more geared towards premed so far)so I'm planning to apply to start a program in 2017. I'm really concerned these grades will prevent me from getting accepted to any programs, but when I met with the admissions officer of the nursing school at the same university of my post-bac she said not to retake these classes (chem and bio are both pre-req's for this particular program). I had a 3.8 undergrad but the pre-requisite gpa will be more important right? It seems really risky not to retake chem and bio, does anyone have any advice on this? Thank you so much in advance!

Thank you both for your responses!!

Thank you all for your feedback!

I am planning on applying for an accelerated BSN program and am taking the pre-requisite science requirements over the next year. I also need to work a part time job and get more healthcare experience while I'm taking classes. I already have research assistant, hospital nurse assistant volunteer, and some other healthcare stuff on my resume but am thinking I need more nursing-related experience to be a competitive applicant. One option I have is to get cna certified and work as a cna part time while taking classes. My other option would to get part time job related to healthcare as a nurse research assistant or something else (through the student jobs available to students) and then do a weekly nurse assistant volunteer program at a local hospital to get more specific nursing/patient experience. I am thinking the second option would be better because it would be more cohesive with taking classes and focusing on raising my gpa/studying for the gre's (since the cna shifts might be overnight and then class is during the day). However, being a cna could be good to get experience in what nursing will be like, and possibly look better when I apply to accelerated bsn programs. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what type of work/extracurriculars I should do while taking my pre-requisities? How important is working as a cna in terms of getting into a good accelerated bsn program? Would not working as cna hurt my chances of being accepted to programs? Thanks in advance for any opinions/suggestions!