Which Nursing school do you recommend?

[VeryPeachy94]

Hi everyone

I'm accepted to Nipissing SPP (24m), Trent Compressed (28m), and Dalhousie advanced standing (24m) in Yarmouth. Which one do you think I should pick?

I have mixed feelings about Nipissing SPP. It's all self-learning and no actual lectures. They have a pass or fail final at the end of the semester and that's it. The graduation rate is 95% and the employment rates are good! I do like the fact that they have partnerships with world-class hospitals like sick children in Toronto. The website provides little information and I don't even know if they have decent labs or any labs at all. When I google the faculty a building called Trinity shows up... No one at the main Nipissing campus seems to know anything about SPP. If you are in this program please tell me about your experience.

As for Trent, I love the atmosphere and their mission. It's one semester longer than the other two which isn't a huge deal. However, their graduation rate is only 80.7%. Is it generally harder to study at Trent? I don't mind but I just don't want to deal with *** classes where the prof doesn't do much, it's unorganized and it's all up to the students to make up for it.

Dalhousie has a better reputation than the other two programs but Yarmouth is a very tiny town and I don't know if having a placement in Yarmouth general hospital will close as many doors as say Toronto's general hospital for me.

Thanks, I really appreciate it!

[jpoushay]

I can’t comment on the quality of the programs as I’m just entering nursing next year. But I can comment on Dal/Yarmouth. I attended Dal (in Halifax, not for nursing) and it is a fantastic school. However. Yarmouth is not Halifax. I’m not sure where you’re from, but Yarmouth is a very, very small town and it’s literally at the tip of Nova Scotia. It’s a beautiful place but it will be very isolated (you’re about 3 hours from Halifax proper; about 3.5 from the airport). From the looks of it you might not need a car to live and work at the hospital but you will need one to get anywhere else in Nova Scotia from Yarmouth. As well there has been a lot of news about Yarmouth Hospital lately. They have lost several anesthesiologists and some women have been told that they won’t be delivering babies there past May of this year (CBC did a story on this a few weeks ago). I’m not sure how Yarmouth hospital has been affected, but ER closures in rural Nova Scotia are routine. Also anything major (complicated cases, some cancer treatments, major traumas, etc.) all get airlifted to Halifax so you probably wouldn't get much of those types of experiences. My point is, I’m not sure how this will affect clinicals and your actual experience there for future job applications. That being said, my sister did rural ER nursing elsewhere in Nova Scotia for several years and loved it. I’m not trying to dissuade you from Dal/Yarmouth or say that people there aren’t getting a good experience (hopefully someone who is studying there can chime in), I’m just relaying my experience as a native Nova Scotian and what I have personally seen from the patient side of things for me and my family. I love Nova Scotia and would absolutely recommend it as a place to live, the people there are the best, you just have to know that you’re not going to have all the amenities of say downtown Toronto or even a larger city in southern Ontario if you move there ?

[VeryPeachy94]

Thank you so much for your comment.

[Khow89]

Check what hospitals/health care facilities are within the city the next city that the school is in. Generally you'll be doing clinicals in those hospitals.