Traditional or online

[maddyfan4]

Hello everyone im hoping I can get some sound advice. Im torn between excelsior college and trying to find a traditional nursing school to attend. Right now im a lpn with a few courses under my belt. I'm in my 40s with 2children 15 and 12. Right now im working in home care and have been for years. If I continue at excelsior will have a problem leaving homecare? I don't need or want to be in a hospital setting but I would like to try other avenues of nursing. Is that doable with only home care experience and a online degree versus hands on from having clinicals every week at a traditional school. Please advise ...Thank you for your time

[caliotter3]

By marginalizing/focusing on the three-day CPNE (a.k.a. weekend clinical rotation), one is disregarding the wealth/years of clinical experience that the typical Excelsior student has already accumulated through their work experience as a paramedic or LPN.

I stand by my assertion that nursing school clinical practicum is a joke. There's a reason hospitals are hesitant to hire today's crops of new grads, even with their 1,500+ hours of nursing school clinical hours. Many new grads accrued the clinical hours without starting one IV line, inserting one Foley catheter, changing a simple dressing or even administering an injection. Simply put, masses of nurses have had poor quality clinical practicum.

A recent new grad lost out on a job opportunity to work the seasonal flu vaccination clinics because, during her four years in a BSN degree program, she had not administered an IM injection. Since she answered this question honestly on the employment application, she was turned away. My point is that nursing school clinical rotations are astoundingly overrated. Essentially, they're a laughing stock.

No truer words were ever spoken as far as I see it. I felt that way while in my BSN clinical practicums years ago and feel that way today. Any nursing experience whatsoever, I have received on the job since I left school. I find it hard to believe that all of the proponents of the brick and mortar school clinical experiences received worthwhile bang for their education buck while my experience was the outlier. The only advantage I see is that you can mosey along in your clinical rotation and have a better chance of passing and being successful than in the CPNE. The CPNE is designed for you to have one (or more) evaluators breathing down your neck, whereas your clinical instructor has to move around to each of her/his eight or nine students and does not necessarily stare you down looking for a reason to fail you at that moment in time. People who do the CPNE take their chances because the reward of being successful could be as a result of their only chance.

[squidbillies]

In response to a post of page two of this discussion, LPN new grads are hired on the regular on almost every floor of my two local hospitals.