WGU MBA-HM first impressions and ongoing comments

[dposborne]

good to hear you are still moving along smoothly. I am in the middle of Leadership now (I already submitted my 2 sections of the handbook to the compiler) and just started the Capstone with my capsim team. The capstone seems overwhelming. I am looking at the task 3 submission examples and I have to say that I'm going to have to take a step back and think about what I'm going to do here.

[dmjacobsen]

good to hear you are still moving along smoothly. I am in the middle of Leadership now (I already submitted my 2 sections of the handbook to the compiler) and just started the Capstone with my capsim team. The capstone seems overwhelming. I am looking at the task 3 submission examples and I have to say that I'm going to have to take a step back and think about what I'm going to do here.

I'm not even thinking about the Capstone at this point, and will likely not try to do any other class concurrently with it. It does look very intimidating, based on previous students' examples. I have a couple of mentors at my new job that I think will be helpful in coming up with ideas.

Oh, that's one thing that I forgot to mention in my last post -- on top of taking two Master's degrees concurrently and having a 5-month old baby, I've decided to jump ship and move away from bedside nursing and into the corporate world. I'm still with the same company, but I'm now a nursing informatics analyst. I think it's going to be a good long-term move for me, by putting me in the middle of various projects with a number of director-level personnel. In the meantime, though, it's a high learning curve, and I'm having to pile on a lot of new information about the behind-the-scenes stuff dealing with Electronic Health Records. Fun stuff.

[videogamesrock]

I'm not even thinking about the Capstone at this point, and will likely not try to do any other class concurrently with it. It does look very intimidating, based on previous students' examples. I have a couple of mentors at my new job that I think will be helpful in coming up with ideas.

Oh, that's one thing that I forgot to mention in my last post -- on top of taking two Master's degrees concurrently and having a 5-month old baby, I've decided to jump ship and move away from bedside nursing and into the corporate world. I'm still with the same company, but I'm now a nursing informatics analyst. I think it's going to be a good long-term move for me, by putting me in the middle of various projects with a number of director-level personnel. In the meantime, though, it's a high learning curve, and I'm having to pile on a lot of new information about the behind-the-scenes stuff dealing with Electronic Health Records. Fun stuff.

Can you share your experience at Excelsior for the Nursing program and the BSN at WGU?

[dmjacobsen]

Can you share your experience at Excelsior for the Nursing program and the BSN at WGU?

It's been several years and the curriculum has probably changed several times since I graduated, but I liked the Excelsior program. It worked well with my schedule -- I started out at a local community college, but they changed the clinical dates with almost no notice, which wasn't conducive to full-time employment. I'd guess probably 80% of the coursework was a review of what I'd already learned in my LPN program, which seems pretty consistent with what a few of my peers have experienced in LPN-to-RN programs. I had several undergrad credits from earlier in life that I'd never wrapped together into a degree, so most of my GenEd was already done -- I only took a couple of CLEPs/DSSTs (I think Psych CLEP, Lifespan Dev DSST, and Technical Writing DSST?) and the 7 or so required Excelsior exams. All of the Excelsior exams were proctored by Pearson Vue, so I felt that the degree was well-validated by that. The final clinical experience -- the CPNE -- is a 2 1/2 day ordeal that is pass or fail -- you either know what you're doing, or you don't. No coaching/teaching during the experience. Excelsior sends you a PDF study guide, which is about 500 pages. It was one hell of a stressful experience. But, in hindsight, it wasn't actually that bad -- you just have to do everything in the way that Excelsior wants you to, and don't take shortcuts. I passed all lab stations and my three patient scenarios on the first try with no repeats. I highly recommend Lynn Frederick's CPNE workshop for this.

The BSN at WGU was just a stepping stone to a Master's. It got the job done. I didn't have any enlightening moments that changed the way I practiced nursing, and -- as with my LPN-to-RN experience -- I found that to be pretty consistent with my peers' experience who went the RN-to-BSN route at other universities. I chose WGU because it was cheaper than my local university and because I could finish it much faster. My local university wanted me to repeat Microbiology and A&P I, because they were older than 5 years. I was not willing to do this just to get a stepping-stone credential.

[dmjacobsen]

I turned in my Social Responsibility task about 4 hours after my post on 9/23. When I woke up the next morning, the task had been passed. Fastest turnaround for any task so far. I needed a quick win after the best of Financial Analysis.

Social Responsibility was pretty easy. If you've taken any ethics classes, especially a business ethics class, this one is fairly straightforward. You're just addressing a number of specific ways that a company of your choice can improve its impact on the three P's -- planet, people, profits -- in an ethical way. You also have to talk about three specific laws that the company has to consider in making these impacts. Definitely one of the easier courses, especially if you work for a company who requires you to complete an inordinate amount of ethics-related CE's. Every. Single. Year.

Next up is the beast that is Decision Analysis. I've read mixed reviews -- some that say it's far worse than Financial Analysis, and some that say it's far easier. Considering my lack of business background, I'm guessing it's going to be the former. I only have one month left in this term, so I likely won't finish DA by the end of term, but I'm working "behind the scenes" on it (hasn't been added to my class list yet, but I can see the task requirements). So, I'm just going to try to bang out as much of the coursework as possible and hope to turn it in early next term.

Still, I've been able to knock out 15 CU's (credit equivalents) in 5 months, all while working concurrently on another Master's, so I won't be too upset at not finishing DA this term.

[dposborne]

For DA the videos show you literally step by step what to do for each task. I used POM for all of the tasks. Following the videos, I was able to complete DA in about 1 1/2 weeks. I remember a lot of the material not making a lot of sense, but by following the videos I was able to understand better and make it through the class with relative ease.

I really think the hardest class for me was Organizational Management. The material was so dry and it seemed like it dragged on forever. Strategic Management kind of pissed me off as well. Its only worth 2 CU but it had a butt load of writing needed to complete it. Ironically though Strategic Management was the class that I did best in receiving the highest praises for the papers I turned in.

[dmjacobsen]

Good to know that the videos for DA are helpful. I haven't started looking at them yet, but I'm glad you mentioned it. I started to watch the video for Social Responsibility, but it was over an hour long -- time that I knew was better spent just writing up the paper.

I don't have to take Strategic Management as part of the MBA-HM -- I think the Accreditation Audit course replaces Strategic Management for this degree. Which I'm thankful for, because Accreditation Audit was a piece of cake.

I have read similar complaints about Organizational Management. One that stands out in my mind -- and which I may have read on these boards -- was from a student who said that, despite her love for music and the arts, she never wanted to hear the word "opera" again after that class.

[dmjacobsen]

Knocked out Decision Analysis pretty quickly. It wasn't bad at all -- the vast majority of it was using various modules in a decision analysis tool (POM) and interpreting the output. Pretty straightforward and pretty easy after some instruction on how to use the tool. My term ends on 10/31. I'd like to try to knock out Risk Management before the end of the term. But, even if I don't, I'll have completed 19 graduate CU's (credit equivalents) in 6 months, with 17 left to go. Definitely looking like I'll be wrapping up the MBA in my 2nd term, so I'm feeling pretty good about that.

[dmjacobsen]

Risk Management -- one and done. Submitted at 5am today and meets requirement as of 6pm tonight (one of the fastest graded tasks I've ever gotten back). RM consists of only one task, but that task is actually three tasks in one. Overall, this was a relatively straightforward and simple course, already having exposure to risk management. Had to come up with a list of risks to an organization, along with a business continuity plan and ways to get the organization back up and running after a disruption to business. I focused on the hospital setting, and most of my risks were based on disaster management. I had some non-disaster based risks (theft of patient information, computer/network malware attacks, and reduction of insurance payments), but all of these were still things that I was already familiar with.

Now, on to Service Line Development, which also looks like it will be relatively simple, as it deals with proposals for opening new clinical service areas and political/economic impacts on healthcare. Again, with a lot of exposure to this area, doesn't look like it will be too bad. This is why I love the WGU model. Don't waste a lot of time on what you already know -- just prove that you know it, and move on.

[dmjacobsen]

Service Line Development -- knocked out in 2 weeks. I didn't expect this course to go by so fast, but I was actually really interested in the material, as I'm working in a hospital that is struggling to find its niche in the local market. All of the tasks dealt with the pro's and con's of different service lines. As of this writing, the service lines were Cardiology, Orthopedics, and Oncology. Coming from an ER background where we sort of know a little bit about everything, but not a lot about any one area of medicine other than Emergency, I found it pretty easy to talk in general terms about the needs of all of these service lines. It might be a little more difficult if I came from a more specialized background.

It also helped to take Financial Analysis before this class. While there wasn't a lot of number-crunching involved in the Service Line course, there were some financials-driven decisions to be made -- buying versus leasing versus building onto existing property as well as profitability of different service lines. So, I would definitely recommend taking FA before this course.

Side note -- after a very brief stint in corporate (as I mentioned above in this thread), my job -- along with 119 others -- was downsized. Really sucks to have not had much of an opportunity to prove myself. But, I can take heart in the fact that I didn't lose my job because of poor performance. Just poor planning and execution by higher-up's. At least I still have a job with my organization, which most of the people that got downsized can't say. Lesson learned -- if you're going to move up in a healthcare organization, stay in the hospital side. I went to a division of the organization that handles physician offices and specialist clinics, and found that it was a much more unorganized and unstable environment. As an unexpected benefit of losing my corporate position, hospital administration has noticed my desire to move up in the organization and I've been given some additional leadership opportunities outside of my department, so I think things will work out well for me in the long run.

So now, I'm down to my last three courses for the program -- Organizational Management, Leadership, and the Capstone. Unfortunately, I can't start Leadership until January, because it's a cohort class. On the upside, because there are no Leadership cohorts in December, my mentor was able to get me into the Capstone starting 12/8. The cohort portion of the Capstone lasts 6 weeks, so I'll be done with that on 1/19/14. Leadership has to be done in 4 weeks, from what I understand, so I'll be done with that by the end of January. Assuming I can get my consultant hours in for the Capstone at work in good time, I'm looking at finishing the program by February at the latest. It's nice to see the light at the end of the tunnel and, if I stay on track, I'll have completed the MBA in 9-10 months. Not bad!