Are all nursing schools this awful?

Hi all,

Apologies in advance for the rant.

I'm a mental health nursing student, just started second year. I passed first year with no real issues, enjoyed the three placements for the most part, but even when things weren't great, just kept my head down and got on with it really, holding on to the idea that things would make a bit more sense in second year and naively, was looking forward to it. How wrong was I?

We've come back as second years to even more chaos. The school of nursing is an absolute farce and treats its students like crap. Zero support is offered, you are fobbed off with the most lacklustre and pointless replies to any query, and I have no idea how the academic staff can bang on about communication and professionalism when they can't even exercise it themselves.

The 2021 intake was the biggest they've ever had across all four nursing fields (almost 300 started), and they keep reminding us of this as if it's our fault when they're struggling with the sheer number of students. Even with a large number dropping out, they can't cope, but it's students taking the brunt of it. The MH cohort I'm in is pretty small, but they are struggling to find us placements at the moment. They released placements two weeks ago to the rest of the nursing students, but there are still a few of us without anything two weeks before placement. It seems that they've been so greedy with intakes that the health board itself doesn't have capacity. I've followed up with my PT, programme lead and the placements team, but just get the most pathetic, patronising replies of 'we're working with the health board.' I'm completely sick of it and that they can treat us as commodities bringing in the cash (which yes, we are), but not fulfilling their side of the agreement. I'm putting in a complaint to the head of school about the of lack placement allocation, with support from the SU, but I have a feeling it will make me very unpopular with certain staff there. They do like a good grudge and can make students' time there uncomfortable, in particular the directors. God knows what they were like as nurses.

Are all other nursing schools like this? It this just the reality of nurse training everywhere in the UK and I should suck it up? I've had a long career in publishing before finally making the move into nursing and working in healthcare, which I'd wanted to do for years, so am not lacking in life experience. I really don't want to give up the course, even though it's going to be a battle like this each time we get a placement allocated now and is mildly soul sapping.