Times Are A Changing
The other day I was hiking with a friend, another former nurse, and she told me about an acquaintance who is trying to get into a community college nursing program. She’s been accepted, but without financial aid, can’t attend. I guess community college tuition has gone up, and the program is geared so that working adults will have supreme difficulty in attending.
Anyway, that’s another story in and of itself (hello, what happened to the nursing shortage and the desperate attempts to get students pushed through at maximum speed), but just out of curiosity, I looked up the school that she is currently taking her prereqs at. I wanted to see the tuition, but got another surprise instead, when I looked at the particulars of their nursing program.
Yes, times have changed. I’m not going to name the school, but this really borders on the ludicrous, especially their first sentence.
Clinical placements, employment, and licensure in a healthcare field often require a background and drug check. XXX school will conduct a XX State Patrol background check on applicants to the Nursing Program. Students need to pay the $10 fee for background checks to the business office, obtain a receipt, and attach that receipt to their application. Results of the background check will be given to the Nursing Program Coordinator.
Excuse me, but since when does getting hired as a nurse require a background check? Drug screens are becoming more common, but considering that there is no national database to keep track of licensed personnel, this seems a bit excessive. And totally unnecessary. The person is entering a nursing program, not applying to the CIA. I can honestly say that no one ever did a background check on me for a nursing job–not for full time, per diem, or with a registry. And I don’t know any other nurse who has ever had one done either.
But that’s just to apply to the program. Now if you’re lucky enough to be accepted….
Students accepted into the Nursing Program will need to complete a more extensive background and drug check as required by the local hospital for clinical placement. Cost for the extensive checks varies between $50 and $110 depending upon the number of states the student has lived in. Results of the background checks will be sent to the Nursing Program Director.
Have these people gone off the deep end? A more extensive background check, just to be a nursing student. Like anyone is going to hand over the narc keys to a student, unsupervised. Are they going to call the FBI, and have a spook go and talk to your former neighbors, your priest, and your parole officer?
Now, how on earth do they know which states the student lived in? They have to go by what the student tells them. So if a student did have a shady past in one state, it could be very easy to omit it.
Now they also want you to have a negative TB test or chest x-ray, Immunization record: recent diphtheria-tetanus vaccination; Positive Titer (German Measles) or measles, mumps and rubella vaccination; varicella; Hepatitis B vaccination series.
That’s something that hospitals do when you’re hired, at their expense. That was never needed just for school. So in addition to tuition, this place is really milking students dry for background checks, drug screens, getting blood titers if you don’t happen to have your little babyhood shot card handy, and you have to get a Hep B vaccine.
Cool. I wish they had done background checks and drug screens when I was first applying. And tried to force me to pay for titers and shots…uh no, sorry. School was expensive enough. And just the thought of it–a background check to apply, and then another one when accepted? I may as well join the military, or the CIA! But if that had been the case, I never would have gone to nursing school. I would have switched to another program, and been a lot happier. As it was, I spent most of my nursing career trying to get out of it.
But maybe this is just one of the school’s tactics for weeding people out. If they are willing to put up with all this crap and expense, then they must truly want to go to nursing school. Those unwilling to submit to unreasonable bureaucracy aren’t wanted or needed. Besides, they would never survive in today’s healthcare system!