Should I start nursing school this May?

TheDudeWithTheBigDog, ADN, RN · Apr 29, 2020

I wouldn't make a decision based on clinical rotations. It might be a good idea to read up on how many nurses actually learned anything in clinical. You can actually look up research about how clinicals are just failing to teach students anything. More clinicals than you think just treat their students like glorified CNAs. Instead of working with the nurses and your instructor to learn nursing, a lot of students are graduating where almost the entirety of what they did in clinical was bed baths and changing people, then doing research that they could have done from home. The point is supposed to be to apply what you're learning in the classroom, instead you're doing the aides job for free. Your classroom time is nursing school, but a huge majority of clinical rotations belong in CNA programs, not nursing school.

carti, BSN, RN · May 3, 2020

On 4/28/2020 at 6:40 PM, joe090909 said:
I actually changed my mind and decided to wait a year to begin. Considering that there may be second waves of shutdown once things reopen up, it seems like a good amount of time of my program may be affected. Personally, I am going to use this year to start preparing and gaining more clinical experience prior to nursing school. Maybe will even take an EMT class?

Not necessary man, shoulda just stuck with school. Mostly everyone in my school had no clinical experience prior to enrolling and they all turned out to be fine nurses. There may be more than 2nd, 3rd, etc. waves.

turtlesRcool · May 16, 2020

On 4/17/2020 at 3:58 PM, loveanesthesia said:
Nursing students shouldn't make a difference in the spread, because you should be appropriately protected.

Should be, but, in reality, might not be able to be appropriately protected at this time. There's still not enough testing, and not enough PPE. With hospitals allocating 1 N95 for each staff member, are they going to want to give out another 9 for each group of students? CT has seen a lot of COVID. We've had exposures even on the "clean" floors when someone later tested positive. Depending on the program, some clinicals might be done in nursing homes, which definitely don't have enough PPE.

On 4/28/2020 at 6:57 PM, CP2016 said:
This is a little bit late, but I’d definitely go ahead and start in May. I’m not sure about your program, but for both my LPN and ADN programs we had clinicals up until a month before graduation. I know you wouldn’t get as many in person clinicals, but there’s a good chance you’ll still be able to attend later down the line.

If it were a traditional program with 4 semesters of clinicals over 2 years, I'd say there's probably enough time to get some good patient interaction before graduation. But since it's an ABSN, that's probably more like a year - 2 regular semesters plus the Summer. If the PPE situation isn't sorted out soon, there's a good chance this year's cohort will lose out on a really large percentage of their hands-on learning. Some people would be okay with that, and others wouldn't.

MsMartina · May 17, 2020

@turtlesRcool has it exactly right, at least for the East Coast hot spots. There is not enough PPE, I was at a health care facility today where staff are wearing patient gowns and garbage bags, where you are handed a KN-95 mask to reuse again and again (days and days), probably till you get COVID. But PPE varies a lot depending on which hospital or facility.

At this point, clinicals are online or whatever the school can dig up, and so far that has been nursing homes. Take a wild guess how much you learn there. I prefer the virtual sim over nursing homes.

My school's priority is not the quality of my (very expensive) education, it is ramming my cohort through the program so we don't delay following cohorts. I hope other nursing schools are doing better, but I don't know.

turtlesRcool · May 17, 2020

34 minutes ago, MsMartina said:
There is not enough PPE, I was at a health care facility today where staff are wearing patient gowns and garbage bags, where you are handed a KN-95 mask to reuse again and again (days and days), probably till you get COVID. But PPE varies a lot depending on which hospital or facility...
My school's priority is not the quality of my (very expensive) education, it is ramming my cohort through the program so we don't delay following cohorts.

Oh, no, that's terrible! I know in the early days we were seeing the garbage bag thing on the news, but I thought we were past that. At my hospital, we've had a few times where we ran short on gowns, but they were restocked. Not to get political, but I was really hoping the stay-at-home efforts were going to buy us time to come up with more PPE and a better game plan. We successfully flattened the curve this time, but I'm really worried about what's to come in subsequent waves.

We are in uncharted waters here, and the reality is that you probably won't have the preparation you deserve in nursing school. It's no fault of yours, the school, or the clinical facilities. The whole infrastructure has fallen apart, and most of us are just doing the best we can. I think hiring managers are going to have to be understanding of the need for many of your cohort to have an extended orientation when you finally graduate.

I hope you and all your cohort stay safe!