Which nursing school is better?

Editorial Team / Admin · Feb 18, 2016

The one with a good reputation, the one that prepares students to function as novice new grad nurses, the one that has a decent NCLEX pass rate.

Basically, the setup of the school isn't as important as your question makes it out to be. It's multifactorial.

sfrw · Feb 18, 2016

Yes, I keep getting the NCLEX pass rate advice a lot. I've gotten accepted to three amazing schools and have no idea how to choose. Two of them have stellar NCLEX pass and completion rates. I need more criteria to make my decision. Any advice?

mindofmidwifery, ADN · Feb 18, 2016

Is cost a factor? I'd personally go with the one attached to the hospital if the hospital is reputable

**NICU Guy, BSN, RN** · Feb 18, 2016

NCLEX pass rate

Cost

Reputation with local hospitals (if you are staying local)

Everything else is not significant. Going to a "highly rated" or "Nationally known" nursing school does not give you an advantage in the job market.

sfrw · Feb 19, 2016

Should I look for schools that have a variety of clinical sites or are just a few clinical sites better?

**NICU Guy, BSN, RN** · Feb 22, 2016

Obviously, the better the clinical site the better your experience will be. For example, doing your pediatric clinicals on a pediatric floor or even at a children's hospital is better than doing pediatric clinicals at a daycare center (someone on here did that). If you have all of your clinicals at a county hospital where they ship out any patients that are critical, then your ICU experience is not going to be as good as if you did your ICU clinicals at a big teaching (for doctors, not nurses) hospital. Ultimately, nursing school clinicals are designed to practice your skills that you learned in lab and get you exposure to patients, hospitals, and how nursing staff does their job.

I liked that my school had a joint venture with a local hospital and medical school to provide a simulation lab for the nursing, medical students, respiratory care students, and social work students. We would have one interdisciplinary scenario each semester. They had several medical manikins that can simulate numerous medical conditions. You can hear heartbeats, lung sounds, monitor changes (pulse, rhythm, blood pressure, resp. rate), it could sweat, talks to you (person in control booth with speaker in the head of patient), start IVs. There were adult (with interchangeable male/female parts) child, OB patient, and newborn.

Lugar Center - RHIC Simulation Center - Union Hospital - Your Partner in Health - Terre Haute and Clinton, Indiana

We had 2 disaster simulations during nursing school. The first was a bomb explosion during our first semester at one of the 14 story classroom buildings that was being prepped for demolition (looked as if a bomb had gone off). My class was the victims (with full special effects make-up) and the upperclassmen were the medical personnel. It was a joint venture with the Army National Guard Search and Rescue, so it was a big scenario. The army would rescue us from the building (6th floor} and the nursing students, army corpmen, nurses and doctors would triage us outside in tents.

The second was during the last semester. We were the medical personnel and the first semester students were the victims. It was a meth lab fire at a sorority house (at the fire dept training center).

sfrw · Feb 22, 2016

That is AWESOME! Do most nursing schools do disaster simulations?

Here.I.Stand, BSN, RN · Feb 23, 2016

I don't know that there is one answer; it all depends on each unique school. From what I understand, the training in hospital based programs was second to none, but you need to consider your marketability because those programs award(ed) diplomas vs. degrees. You want to look at NCLEX first-time pass rates, cost, academic and clinical experience of the instructors. A good sim lab is a plus.

You want to find out what the clinical experiences entail. You want to learn at clinical. You don't want clinical experiences to be limited because you'll learn your skills in orientation anyway. You want clinical instructors who will teach you personally -- not rely on the floor nurses to do it for them. You want a variety, but particularly good med-surg experiences because the NCLEX is quite med-surg focused. (I def. drew on clinical experiences when taking my NCLEX.) My ADN program started us in clinicals from the very first semester; first semester we had geriatrics and OB, and after that we had med-surg every semester plus others such as psych, community (e.g. public health, school nursing, home care), corrections, OR, chemical health, travel and family practice clinics, periop, ED, and ICU.

I believe what Guy in Babyland was referencing was on an episode of "Frontline" -- it was an episode on for-profit colleges, and it featured 3 LPNs who were suing the school (Everest, I think?) because they couldn't get jobs. They said they never set foot in a hospital; they did their peds clinicals at a daycare center and psych clinicals at a Church of Scientology. :wideyed:

sfrw · Feb 23, 2016

So one of the schools is literally in a hospital. It takes up a whole floor while the hospital is below and above it. It's a magnet hospital with a great reputation and awesome NCLEX pass rates but there's a catch.

When I went to my interview, I asked about where they do clinicals and they said that they have a partnership with the next nearest magnet hospital/school. So students from program A have clinical at hospitals A and B. Students from program B have clinical at program B and A. Even though they are both exceptional hospitals, that's only two clinical sites. Is that a good thing or bad thing?

AspiringNurseMW · Feb 23, 2016

Obviously, the better the clinical site the better your experience will be. For example, doing your pediatric clinicals on a pediatric floor or even at a children's hospital is better than doing pediatric clinicals at a daycare center (someone on here did that). If you have all of your clinicals at a county hospital where they ship out any patients that are critical, then your ICU experience is not going to be as good as if you did your ICU clinicals at a big teaching (for doctors, not nurses) hospital. Ultimately, nursing school clinicals are designed to practice your skills that you learned in lab and get you exposure to patients, hospitals, and how nursing staff does their job.
I liked that my school had a joint venture with a local hospital and medical school to provide a simulation lab for the nursing, medical students, respiratory care students, and social work students. We would have one interdisciplinary scenario each semester. They had several medical manikins that can simulate numerous medical conditions. You can hear heartbeats, lung sounds, monitor changes (pulse, rhythm, blood pressure, resp. rate), it could sweat, talks to you (person in control booth with speaker in the head of patient), start IVs. There were adult (with interchangeable male/female parts) child, OB patient, and newborn.
Lugar Center - RHIC Simulation Center - Union Hospital - Your Partner in Health - Terre Haute and Clinton, Indiana
We had 2 disaster simulations during nursing school. The first was a bomb explosion during our first semester at one of the 14 story classroom buildings that was being prepped for demolition (looked as if a bomb had gone off). My class was the victims (with full special effects make-up) and the upperclassmen were the medical personnel. It was a joint venture with the Army National Guard Search and Rescue, so it was a big scenario. The army would rescue us from the building (6th floor} and the nursing students, army corpmen, nurses and doctors would triage us outside in tents.
The second was during the last semester. We were the medical personnel and the first semester students were the victims. It was a meth lab fire at a sorority house (at the fire dept training center).

That sounds flipping fabulous and amazing!