UVM MEPN program for 2013

blizz108 · Mar 1, 2013

Congratulations! Woo hoo!

I applied, but I haven't heard anything yet. How did you get your acceptance?

rlp528 · Mar 4, 2013

Hi,

I also received my acceptance to the UVM MEPN program on February 28th, and I just sent my documentation today to reserve my place. For Blizz108: You should receive a letter by email, followed by an official letter in the mail. I think the program is rolling admissions, which means that they send out one round of letters, wait for responses, and then send out another round of letters, etc., until they fill the places.

Tessss: Congratulations! Are you going to do the program? Let me know! I would love to get to know fellow classmates before the program begins.

- Rebecca

StarofLifeRN · Mar 5, 2013

Hi guys! Congrats on your acceptances! I am in the current MEPN class at UVM and would be happy to answer any questions about my experience.

Tessss · Mar 8, 2013

Hi guys!

Rebecca: congratulations to you too! Blizz: good luck and let us know when you hear back from schools. I think I'm going to go and I'm so excited. Vermont is a big move for me (I live in California and have never even been to Vermont!), so I've been hesitating on sending my letter back even though I've pretty much decided :) It'll be so nice to be acquainted with some people online since I won't know a single soul in Burlington. Crs249: I have SO many questions! Thank you so much for volunteering your experience. First of all, do you like the program? What are your favorite things about it so far? How about the town? I heard Burlington is beautiful. Do you have any recommendations on how to find housing/what neighborhoods to live in? Any general tips you wish you had known when you started the program? Can't wait to meet you guys!

--Tess

StarofLifeRN · Mar 9, 2013

Hi Tess! This is a career change for me - I worked at a small college here in Burlington for 21 years before deciding to make a mid-life career change. I am enjoying the program so far. There are 15 people in my cohort (we started with 18). My classmates are from all around the country including a couple from Cali and one from Alaska. I'm the oldest at 47. The youngest is 23 and just graduated from her undergrad program. We've got a variety of backgrounds including landscapers, someone who worked for the state department, a social worker, a yoga instructor, someone who worked in San Fran at a clinic for transgendered patients, and me from higher education. Some of us had some prior medical experience (I'm an EMT) and others had none.

The first semester was really intense. We had Patho, Pharmacology and Med-Surg on Monday and Wednesday, clinicals on Tuesday and Thursday, and post-clinical conference plus Nursing Issues on Friday. For clinicals you start out with four weeks in the lab learning skills. Some of the labs are with standardized patients (real people who are trained to act as patients), which makes it feel more real than practicing on your classmates. UVM has fantastic sim labs and equipment, so you get hands on right from the start. Our first clinical was at a local long-term care facility - some of us were on the subacute rehab wing and others with the permanent nursing home residents. We starteed out doing the basics like personal care (bed baths, toileting, making beds, ambulating, etc), we did catheters and wound care, attended the patient's appointments, and closer to the end we were doing med pass. We would have one patient each per week, and did chart review the night before to learn about our patient's case and meds. We wrote a nursing care plan that we had to follow, and we had to know our meds inside and out.

UVM has a four-week winter break, but we only had two weeks off because the other two weeks were spent doing an 80 hour clinical at the hospital. Half of us were on the neurology floor and the other half on general surgery. This semester we're taking Women and Newborns, Pediatrics, Mental Health, and Pathophys Phenomena. For clinicals half of us are on the cardiology floor and the other half on hemotology/oncology. We are now up to 3 patients each, and we're doing almost everything the RNs are doing, plus helping the LNAs. We have clinicals all day on Monday and Tuesday, classes all day on Wednesday, and one class on Thursday which just wrapped up so we now have Thursdays and Fridays off. (Woot!) In April we switch clinicals to mother and baby for four weeks. This summer we will have one class, and do clinicals in Mental Health, Peds, and Community Health.

If you think it sounds like there's no rest for the weary, you're right! It's exhausting, but it's also fun. You'll get to be very tight with your group as you spent a LOT of time together. And you look forward to being together. For example, we're on spring break right now, but we have an assignment due next week to watch a movie and do a writeup. Nine of us got together last night for potluck and drinks and watched the movie at a classmate's home.

Burlington is a great city, and this part of Vermont is not representative of the rest of the state (more urban, less rural). I've lived here more than half of my life. (I grew up in Massachusetts and came to Vermont for college and never left.) There are five colleges in the immediate area, and a vibrant downtown (lots of restaurants, bars, theaters, and shopping). It's right on Lake Champlain which you can look across to the Adirondack Mountains in NY. If you enjoy outdoor sports, there's a couple of bikepaths in town, and this area is close to great hiking and skiing. Lake Champlain has some nice beaches in the summer time, including right here in Burlington. Montreal is 90 minutes north. You can take a megabus to New York City from campus. You can drive to Boston in under 4 hours.

As for housing, it's a college town, so there is a lot. It depends on what you're looking for and whether you have your own transportation, prefer to walk, or will use public transportation. (Your UVM id lets you ride the city busses for free.) Some of my out-of-town classmates looked for apartments on Craigslist. The nursing department can also put you in touch with the folks at UVM that have the housing leads. I also think there is graduate student housing.

Getting around campus is easy between walking and the shuttles. All of our classes are on the medical campus, which is literally connected to the hospital, so when you're doing second semester clinicals you can use your same parking routine. You'll need transportation to the first semester clinicals, but if your class is like mine, you'll have local students who are happy to carpool.

The weather may be quite an adjustment if you're coming from a warmer climate. It can get below zero in the winter. We've had a pretty mild winter in terms of snow this year, but you never know what you're going to get. One hour south of us got over a foot of snow this week. We got nothing, and in fact today it will be in the 40s. On the flip side, it can get into the 90s in the summer. I would say by mid-April we've ditched the North Face parkas for sweatshirts.

Tips for starting... If you can take some time this summer to relax, DO IT! You really hit the ground running on day one. I had just taken A&P the prior year so I was current on that info. If it's been a while since you've had that, you might want to do a quick review of the body systems. If your instructors provide a syllabus before the first week, do the first week's reading before classes start. The volume of reading is crazy, and it's easy to get behind.

They will likely do an orientation for you guys the Friday before classes start. We met with some students from the class before us and they gave us some good tips on supplemental books that will be helpful. They also had a "yard sale" which was a good opportunity to pick up some used scrubs and books. The MEPN scrubs are wine colored, and they have a vendor come to campus to take orders so you don't need to do anything special there. We also have white lab coats for the times you need to be at a clinical site but aren't working (like chart review, or if you're shadowing in different areas).

One of my classmates started a closed Facebook group once we started to get our acceptance letters. She gave the name of it to the UVM student services contact who shared it with other new admits. It was a great place to "meet" each other during the summer. We still use that group today to communicate amongst ourselves.

If you guys have other questions, let me know! If you want to private message me, I'll be happy to share my personal email address if you have questions you'd rather not ask in a public forum.

Congrats again on getting accepted. It's an exciting time! I know August seems a long time away, but it really goes by fast.

Tessss · Mar 9, 2013

Oh my goodness, thank you so much for spending the time to write such a detailed response! There's not much info on the MEPN website with regards to anything other than curriculum and after reading what you've written I feel much less like I'm going into this blind. I'm really excited (and a lot less nervous now :) to get started and I can't wait to meet what sounds like a pretty stellar group of nursing students! Thanks again!!

--Tess

blizz108 · Mar 12, 2013

Well, I haven't heard from UVM yet (probably means no go) but I'm in at Simmons and I just had an interview at UMW for the DNP program. I hope to hear this week!

Tessss: Where in CA are you from? I was born and raised there. You will really like Burlington. It's a great city (feels like a town)!

StarofLifeRN · Mar 14, 2013

Blizz, I wouldn't give up yet. Some of my classmates got later acceptance letters - like April or May later. Congrats on Simmons in the meantime!

Tess, here's a link to a resource at UVM about off-campus housing that will give you an idea about the kind of housing available.

The University of Vermont | Off Campus Housing Search

There are often post-baccs and med students looking to share housing.

jcrewgirl866 · Mar 19, 2013

Hi. I just got an email from UVM saying I'm on the wait list with 25 others. They said they will contact us by May 1 regarding their decision.

blizz108 · Mar 20, 2013

I received that email as well. I'm going to be removing my name because I've decided on the GEP to DNP track at UMass Medical.

Now it is only 24 others! Good luck to all!

jcrewgirl866 · May 1, 2013

Has anyone heard anything else?