Questions, comments, or problems?  You're always welcome to Email me (but please not in HTML format!).  Since February 26, 2000, you are visitor #

7/8/01: Several of you have very flatteringly urged me to consider other options of becoming an FNP since the UW program kicked me out.  Unfortunately, they are simply not an option.  I am nearly 50, my family has already suffered neglect from taking the BSN and then the wasted MSN courses, we're not willing to move or take out student loans, the few distance-learning programs are prohibitively expensive and require you to find your own preceptors, and I'd have to repeat courses I've already taken at UW.  I am simply not willing to put my kids through losing Mama for several more years.  Retrospectively, it was stupid of me to put all my eggs in the University of Wyoming basket, but that's what I did.

6/3/01: A number of you have Emailed me, asking why it has been so long since I've added anything here.  There is a reason and it's not a happy one.  I am no longer in the University of Wyoming FNP program.  I was flunked on clinical Fall 2000.  I say "was flunked" rather than "flunked" because the "reasons" given for failing me don't hold water, to say the least.

Needless to say, I was shattered, and it took me several weeks to start to think logically again.  Once I did, a number of points begged explanation. 

First, one of the "reasons" I was given was that I was unable to complete a simple H&P in fifteen minutes.  This was my second semester in clinicals, and I knew from the NP listserv that even new grads were typically given extra time.  When an experienced NP friend asked how I was doing and I told her I'd been flunked out and why, she pointed out that she gets 30 minutes for a visit!

Homeschooling curriculum reviews
Hydroponics info

Another "reason" was that my visit notes were not good enough.  Interestingly, at the start of the semester, my preceptor considered them good enough to dictate into the system as her official visit notes.  If they became inadequate over the course of the semester, I don't know how, and I certainly was not told that they had deteriorated.

Finally, the clinical examiner was new to UW.  She may have been experienced elsewhere, I don't know.  She was certainly an experienced and knowledgeable FNP.  But during her site visit, she took over questioning one of the two patients she saw with me, asking GERD-specific questions.  From the responses, she was correct that GERD was the problem, but wasn't it my job to find that out?  When I was notified that I had not passed clinical, I asked (politely) why she took over the history-taking.  There may well have been a good reason for her doing so.  But instead of an answer, I was told it was "inappropriate" for me to question the examination process!  Excuse me?  My entire professional future is at stake and it's "inappropriate" for me to want to understand how I was evaluated?

So that seems to be the end of my dream of becoming a FNP.  I could have fought it, but if the faculty wanted to fail me and I succeeded this time, there would have been another failure later, and I just don't have the energy to continually fight them.  (This was the third time the faculty of this program had shafted me.  The first time was fall 1997, when I got a B instead of an A in a course because the instructor partially based the grade on "peer evaluations."  I did appeal this, and the instructor herself admitted in a private discussion with the Dean that I had done A-level work, but at the end of this discussion, instead of a date for a formal appeal that I had been expecting, the Dean said "it ends here" and killed my appeal.  So much for the right of appeal.  I could have appealed to the Graduate School but decided a deserved A wasn't worth alienating the nursing faculty. 

I'm sure you can understand that I'm not interested in maintaining NP-specific information on my website any more.  I wanted to be an NP so long and it still hurts too much.  I'll gradually delete it so you have plenty of time to capture anything that interests you onto your own computer.  Check out the other pages for the date any given section will be deleted, I'll try to provide a month's notice before killing files.

Regards,
Sylvia Steiger RN BS (no longer SFNP)