UPMC St. Margaret School of Nursing

ChristineN, BSN, RN · Jan 17, 2006

Bump :)

steelcityrn, RN · Jan 17, 2006

upmc nurse here.....thats a great nursing program. I had heard their pass rate was high. Good luck to you........GO STEELERS.....JUST 2 MORE WINS NEEDED.....LOL

ChristineN, BSN, RN · Jan 17, 2006

upmc nurse here.....thats a great nursing program. I had heard their pass rate was high. Good luck to you........GO STEELERS.....JUST 2 MORE WINS NEEDED.....LOL

LOL, not a Pitt resident yet, but I understand your eagerness over a possible Super Bowl.

Did it take you long after applying to here back from St. Margaret's and get scheduled for testing? I sent my application in about three weeks ago and was wondering how long I should anticipate waiting. :)

ChristineN, BSN, RN · Jan 18, 2006

Didn't anyone go to St. Margaret's?

CoffeeRTC, BSN, RN · Jan 26, 2006

I didn't even know they had a program:crying2: I went to Pitt.

Shamira Aizza · Jul 20, 2006

I attended UPMC S. Maggies.

I give them an overall grade of "C". Nothing special about the school. The instructors are not pioneers in nursing education and they give the same canned lectures every year using the same OVERHEADS as before...yes, overheads...welcome to the new millenium where evidence-based medicine is apparently developing faster than the rate of nursing education.

The few times any of them attempted to use powerpoint, they didn't know how to use it properly and they were scrolling from the edit page, but it was still better than the painful routine of watching them put transparency after transparency upside-down and backwards on the overhead projector.

The exams frequently didn't match the syllabus or lecture content, and one of the instructors actually told me their primary intention was to prepare us to pass the state boards...teaching us to be good nurses was secondary, and this may explain why they have great pass rates (in addition to the fact that they REQUIRED us to take an NCLEX review on site...which I stopped attending after the second day. After the "prepare-us-for-the-boards" comment, I stopped buying the books and I never studied again because I already had a degree and I know how to take exams...I passed just fine (and I tagged out with a "Pass" on the NCLEX at 75 questions.

I would take a look in advance at the scheduled lecture and sometimes would go to work instead of fighting to stay awake through a half-baked lecture. Special speakers were a gift from God because the instructors were too lazy to glean content from their lectures to put in the exams, and I found those to be excellent opportunities to head to the library and catch up on news, email...or sleep, because I gotta tell you, I worked full-time during school and paid cash, and the schedule was brutal. I couldn't exercise and I gained 30 lbs, and developed the only ear infection I ever had in my life (raging and bilateral).

I was told at the mid-program eval and graduation interview that they couldn't figure out how I did it, but that I must just be "good in the clutch." I asked for as many patients as they would give me in clinical while other students were still struggling to keep up with one patient. I volunteered to go to the ICU..and I found an odd mixture of arrogance among some of the shakiest ICU nurses I ever met. Their ICU was nothing more than a nursing home with ventilators and these girls thought they were practicing cutting-edge nursing. I found it ironic a couple years later when I was precepting some of these same nurses in one of the university hospitals down-town where they came to get some "real" ICU experiences. If I was as nasty as some nurses who like to eat their own only a few years before, I would've bitten back, but I don't think that's good for the industry. I hope they're doing well because I've long since moved from Pittsburgh.

In general, I've got a few unpleasant memories related to clinical experiences where folks took prime opportunities for teaching and turned them into nasty displays of their unpleasant personalities. I remember being in the cath lab (diagnostic only) where a patient was getting a transthoracic ECHO (no other nurses or physicians in sight), and I saw that the patient was in a complete heart block with a rate of 30. I pointed it out to the tech and suggested that a physician should probably be notified immediately and she started yelling at me to just watch and keep my mouth shut because I was making the patient anxious. I suppose a dead patient isn't an anxious patient. Another time I took an excused absence from clinical (we were allowed two per session), and the clinical instructor wrote me up suggesting I called off because she felt I gave the impression that I didn't like the clinical assignments she gave me. Apparently the fact that I was taking on the biggest clinical assignments in the class was forgotten in considering my work ethic. When I pointed out her inappopriopriate behavior in front of the other instructors, she was forced to back down and the program director discarded the 'write-up.' It was a classic moment of justice.

Meanwhile, I'm the only one from my program that has finished a BSN and attended graduate school...and I was inducted into SigmaThetaTau after leaving St. Maggies...when I called to tell my instructors at St. Maggies, they sounded incredulous.

The clinical experience is a bit distorted because the hospital is in a wealthy section of Pittsburgh (where Teresa Kerry has a home and Bill Cowher lives), and the hospital only has private rooms. Not very realistic.

The hospital doesn't have any special clinical programs (no specialty cardiac or trauma or pediatrics, etc), but those clinical programs are arranged downtown at other hospitals. The ER is incredibly busy and would be a great place to get some clinical experience, but we only were given 16 hours of ER time.

The good parts about the program were the fact that the instructors (as backwards as they may have been academically), actually developed meaningful relationships with the students (although there were a couple of them I learned to distrust because they could be friendly to your face and stab you in the back the next day). The camaraderie among students was fantastic and one of my classmates remains one of my best friends. I've had to be honest and recommended West Penn, Shadyside, and Citizen's General as being superior diploma programs...it's only the right thing to do, but I believe that St. Maggies can be an adequate launching ground for a motivated student/RN who is able to rise above the substandard nature of the program...spots in good programs are tough to find and I chose St. Maggies because it allowed me to finish in the shortest amount of time possible. I guess there are some trade-off's.

Before you criticize my position, consider that I am only being honest.

ChristineN, BSN, RN · Jul 20, 2006

Thank you Shamira for your post. I shyed away from St. Margaret's when I found out I would have to wait approximately a year to start classes. Shadyside took me right away. :)

BTW: Congrats on the BSN and grad school. I have similar aspirations for the future.

FOLK110 · Aug 27, 2009

There nclex pass rate is high because they wein everyone out right before graduation! They have 25 students start and only 11 graduate is what they arent printing and telling people!!!!!!