This was my home for three years from 1977-80! I started out on the 4th floor, moved to the 3rd floor my second year and had this really cool suite our last year. Our rooms the last year were right above the main entrance. See the four bigger windows with the two smaller ones in between? The smaller ones were our bathroom, the bigger ones were our two bedrooms. And, no...we weren't fortunate enough to have air conditioners in our windows like in this pic! I do recall keeping our fetal pigs in between the screen and the window our freshman year. We had anatomy and physiology at Muhlenberg College and they specifically did the fetal pig during winter so we could keep them there....LOL!! There are lots of memories from my time here in nursing school! Unfortunately, the school graduated its last class in 1988. There was a push then, and continues still, for registered nurses to go to four year programs and get a bachelor's degree. This was a three year, thirty three month, year round diploma program. Many of the diploma programs throughout the country have closed....unfortunately.
I will tell you that we started working in the hospital the second week of the program, and by our second year three days out of every week was spent in the hospital. The four year degree programs didn't even get you into the hospital until your junior year!! Our program was set up that we had three months each of pediatric, maternity, psychiatric and critical care. The four year degree programs had and still have much less time in each specialty. When we graduated, and worked alongside graduates of a college prepared program, some of them had never done IV's, enemas, wound redressings, etc. We were well versed in all of those!
One final note....as a graduate, I was hired to work in the ICU at Allentown Hospital at an hourly rate of $5.92!!
3 comments:
Wow, I thought my first wage as a crossing guard was low at $3.35 an hour. I climbed up to $7.78, 27 years later.
It is amazing when we look back how much things have changed, some for the good and some not for the good.
I'm sure then you thought that as a good salary. Plus, happy to be working at the job you trained for.
Now nurses are worth so much more.
I remember a cleaning job I got in HS for 2.85 and babysitting for 50 cents and hour! The fetal pig thing....Ew! We had fetal pigs in bio in HS -I can't imagine keeping one in your window!
Well, to me your diploma program makes so much more sense. I wonder why the push for the 4 year degree program? You do get a lot of book learning but nursing is as much about physically taking care of ppl as much as knowing and understanding about sickness. Or it used to be.
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