<p>Congratulations to all of you accepted into the UD Nursing Program. I initially posted this thread two years ago but I thought it might be of some interest to students accepted to the Nursing Program at UD this year (and I updated it as well).</p>
<p>Our D graduated from UD in 2010 with her BSN. We are OOS from NJ. If anyone has any questions regarding the Nursing Program at UD I would be happy to try and answer them. She elected to attend UD after considering a number of other Nursing Programs (Villanova, Rutgers-NB, TCNJ, UVM, and Catholic U.). She opted for UD for a wide variety of reasons, not the least of which was the high quality of Nursing Education facilities available at UD. UD has a state-ofthe-art nursing lab and even utilizes theater arts majors as mock patients. They now have a three year old Nurse Managed Health Center located on-site as well. She is now very happy that she made this decision as she feels the quality of the education she received at UD was excellent. At UD she also was involved with a sorority (yes it can be done even by nursing majors if you budget your time well) where she lived her sophomore year. Jr. and Sr. years she lived in an off-campus apartment right on Main Street almost right across the street from the UD bookstore. She also was involved in several paid Nursing Externship positions at local hospitals where she gained a lot of experience to supplement her formal educational program at UD (the extra money was nice too).</p>
<p>How does the UD Nursing Program rate/compare to other high quality Nursing Programs? Judging by our Ds experiences I would say pretty well. Following graduation she passed the NCLEX exam on her first try (over 90% of UD grads pass the first time) with the minimal number of questions (75) required. She then landed a highly competitive (nearly a thousand applicants for only about 10 positions) entry level RN position in NYC at New York Presbyterian/Cornell Medical Center on one of Cornells Neurological ICU units. Other RNs hired along with her included a second UD grad and graduates from Penn, BC, NYU, UConn, UVA and TCNJ not bad company to be selected with. She found that the academics and clinical education she received at UD was at least equal to, and in some areas even exceeded, that obtained by these other graduates. A BSN degree from UD is apparently thought of very highly by at least one very prestigious (Ivy League) Academic Medical Center. While there she prepared for and passed the Critical Care Registered Nurse certification exam, and in January of 2011 was accepted into the top Nursing Graduate Program in the country (for her MSN as Family Health Nurse Practitioner) at the University of Pennsylvania (but she decided to attend one of the top programs in the South at the Univ. of Miami-she is a warm weather person). Based upon all the above It is my perspective that a BSN Degree from UD can be a ticket to the beginning of a highly successful Nursing career.</p>
<p>I realize that all students accepted to the Nursing Program at UD have probably also been accepted to other high quality Nursing Programs. I am not trying to imply that UDs Nursing Program is necessarily better than these other Nursing Programs. Rather my perspective is, if you apply yourself, that the educational experience that you can get in the Nursing Program at UD is on a par with any Nursing Program in the country. </p>
<p>Once again if anyone has any questions regarding the BSN Program at UD please feel free to ask on this thread or PM me and I will attempt to answer them to the best of my ability. Best wishes to all of you in your future Nursing careers wherever you decide to attend.</p>
<p>My d and I visited for Decision Day yesterday. D was very impressed by the students and the nursing faculty. She is having trouble making a decision between three colleges…Delaware being one of them…but Decision Day certainly made her like Delaware even more. Yesterday was a beautiful day, so even though we had already visited in the past, I think she appreciated the beautiful campus even more. We were at another accepted day on Friday and it seems that most of the nursing students are having trouble making decisions. I found that to be true yesterday as well. Only a few said that they had committed anywhere. I appreciate all the information that Mwallenmd shared above…it all helps! I think my daughter has been reluctant about Delaware because she thinks its too close (about an hr) and she has it in her head to go far…but after meeting students who say they felt the same way, but are now happy with their decision, she may be changing her mind just a little.It’s such a tough decision! Hopefully they all make one soon!Thanks for all the info above!</p>
<p>NJMOM3:
I can certainly identify with your D’s dilemma in wanting to get some distance away from home for college. Our D was invited by Penn to apply for ED for undergrad admission and she would not even consider it because we live so close to Penn (about 20 minutes away from our home in South Jersey). We also actually live about an hour away from UD. Our D found this to be a perfect distance for her to attend school. I will say she did have her car with her for all 4 years (we split the cost 50/50 for the parking permits) so if she needed to come home for something (which was rare but did happen) she found it convenient and not too disruptive in regards to her other activities/schoolwork to do so. She also found that once she started with her nursing externships she was able to continue to be involved with them during winter/summer breaks as she could commute to them from our home with no problem because of the distance. From our perspective we found the distance to also be convenient as we could go down on day visits on certain holidays (i.e. Easter, Mother Day, etc.) to take her (and usually some of her friends whose parents were too far away to visit just for the day) out to eat. Our D is a very independent and social person so it was a little surprising to us to find that once she left home she still seemed to feel/function better with the availability of having fairly close, but far enough away, contact with her family. I’m sure she would not admit this if asked. Obviously every student is different in their interests/desires/needs but these were our experiences with our D. Good luck to your D in making her decision. She certainly can’t go wrong attending UD for Nursing but I am sure she will do just fine if she decides to attend elsewhere.</p>
<p>Just some additional food for thought in deciding on a Nursing Program:</p>
<p>Over the last 5 years (at least) Nursing BSN curriculums have been evolving to be much more academic in nature as the Nursing Field itself has been evolving into a distinct Healthcare Discipline of its own, separate from its historical role as just providing clinical care based on following physician orders. High quality BSN curriculums now place a much greater emphasis on critical thinking and independent decision making; clinical problem solving; differential diagnosis; the development of leadership skills; research; and the development and evaluation of Nursing Evidence-Based Best Practices and Standards of Care. The development and teaching of these skills requires some degree of didactic education prior to their clinical application. Many students applying to BSN Programs tend to compare programs based on how quickly students become involved in clinical settings and the total number of clinical hours in the program, assuming that the programs that provide early clinical involvement and/or a large number of clinical hours are therefore better as a result of this. This might not be necessarily the case, as students need time to be educated in these new skills in order to be able to fully integrate/apply them as part of their clinical training experiences. The best approach from an educational perspective would be a program that provides progressive involvement in clinical settings as these new skills are taught and learned by students. This approach can minimize the potential for students feeling overwhelmed and inadequate. “On the job” exposure to clinical settings without adequate preparatory education is a prescription for failure. The utilization of nursing simulation labs is an important component in this preparation. When trying to decide on which Nursing Program to attend I would recommend those that provide graduated involvement in clinical settings following appropriate preparatory didactic educational components.</p>
<p>The Nursing Curriculum at UD is a research based design that has been specifically formulated and implemented to effectively address (from an educational perspective) this ongoing evolution of the Nursing Discipline. I can therefore highly recommend it.</p>