Abuse at school

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How do you deal with student abuse from teachers in nursing school? Nurses are terrified to address this topic, some even to the point of absolute denial.

What do you suggest to do?

For the nurses who promote it, how do you justify it? I just want to know the truth is all, and to go from there.

Some have their head too far up their butt and lack understanding to understand that the only ones holding them back from being amazing people is themselves. I asked for feedback and I got some excellent advice. She didnt give me a chance to show it. For the last week she said I could go to clinicals but she would fail me anyways. She said I didnt focuz my assessment enough and that was a fail to her. Great advice but another poor excuse to fail

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And she actually said you'd fail anyways? What is a person suppose to do with that if they are so committed to a certain result as a teacher.

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I've seen it happen to good students, but did not speak up because I did not want a target on my back. It happens so people need to stop denying it doesn't happen.

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Specializes in Emergency Room, Trauma ICU.

Im sorry but everything the OP is writing comes off as gibberish. I can't take anything she says seriously. How is standing in front of the class abuse?? Where was the teacher supposed to stand? To me this just comes across as sour grapes.

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Specializes in LTC,Hospice/palliative care,acute care.

Abuse of power is wrong. Teachers (not just in nursing school) nurses, cops-any boss can be guilty of that. I would like to point out if you present your case up your chain of command in a clear and concise manner you will be heard. If you do it the same way you communicate on here you may as well forget about it. It's very difficult to understand your posts.

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First off, you pay the school to provide you with an education. At mostly a very steep price. Teachers can be as nasty as they want to be in their own lives, but when they are nasty to students, it crosses a line.

Sometimes, nasty can be seen as overbearing. Nursing school has a LOT of rules. I can remember having a teacher really angry with me as I was working full time and going to school--therefore I was "practically asleep". Actually that was not correct, some really apparent learning issues came out for me after a hiatus from High School to LPN school, however, I can remember thinking "who does this woman think she is" line of thinking.

Nursing is unique in that there's both clinical and class time. And you have to be good at both to survive. When someone is an accounting major for instance, they don't have clinical time in a CPA's office--therefore, you graduate and then you sink or swim. Nursing has the ability to drown you when you are almost done, based on clinical performance.

If your teacher is nasty, speak to your academic advisor about it. Better to be put in classes where you may meld more easily than to struggle and get anxiety over your performance.

Best wishes going forward!

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Specializes in Critical Care.

I am an instructor. There are bad instructors out there. There are bad students too. It's true in every profession.

I have ask what type of school this is?

You need objective facts and to follow the chain of command. Even the Dean of Nursing has a boss. Document, document, document. You may even escalate to the board of nursing.

I have encountered students that are borderline abusive to instructors and I have heard stories of horrible instructors. Unfortunately these types of people are everywhere.

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Specializes in Med Surg, Specialty.

A lot of what you wrote, even in the follow up posts is still quite vague.

What about not allowing a student to contact teachers for classes?
What do you mean here, like if you have a question about an assignment you can't email the teacher?

Or lying to students about what classes to take?
what do you mean here, like saying a class is required when it isn't? I actually had an experience with this, where my adviser told me to take a specific class which was incorrect -- was it abuse? No, it was just a person who made a mistake, he was not intentionally lying to me. Luckily I looked into the program requirements in the manual and went back to the adviser and we got it straightened out. Lesson learned -- for ANYTHING important, do NOT solely rely on someone else, but make sure to put the work in yourself. Or, make sure you always double check what someone says is true with a written source to confirm.

The weirdest one I saw was where a teacher tried to stand in front of the class, in a sort of ugly attack since she thought being the teacher in front of a class held unquestionable power, tell the students that it wasn't true they were being taken advantaged of, and said that we should never talk about it because just because everyone says it it doesn't mean that it is true.

Then, seeing that in a class of 24, even the students that want favor with any teacher wouldn't agree with her. She freaked out, turned on the air conditioner in a classroom where everyone was wearing a coat, and then proceeded to go through moods swings for the next four hours.

I could write a book about it. It is a scandal.

So the teacher was upset because someone said they were being treated unfair? This paragraph doesn't give any of the details to say how people were taken advantage of for an outsider to agree or disagree.

My school admitted 1 in 4 of its qualified applicants to start the nursing program, and graduated less than 1 in 3 of those who started the nursing program. What happened? Well, a variety of factors.

You must make sure to do 100% of what the teacher wants, no deviation. I had a classmate at clinicals who forgot to come to the hospital the night before to do the careplans/patient prep work. She was there at the clinical time, and she was sent home with a failing grade for that day. I remember another student was sent home from clinical with a failing grade for the day for something I thought was ridiculous (can't remember what it was), but, that only hones the point that you have to be on top of your game 100% of the time, because at least in my school you could get 2 (or 3?) failing clinical days before you were dropped from the class. There were several other clinical instructors with very specific requirements, some seemed tedious or stupid, but hey, they are the instructors so if you don't do it you will get points off or even a failing grade for the day.

I had multiple other times where a teacher did a very poor job of preparing the students for what to expect was on the test, so what did I do? I made sure to read every single word of the books, which took me an immense amount of time, since I didn't want to be surprised by what was on the test, and I attended extra sessions they held (such as review sessions or open office sessions).

A big part of college is learning what your teacher wants, and going by that. I remember being so taken aback when I first started college, there was one class where I was acing the quizzes but when the first test came along I failed it terribly. What happened? I had a preconcieved notion that quizzes were preparation for what was going to be on the test. Little did I realize that this particular teacher tested completely different material for quizzes(based mainly on our lab work) vs tests (based mainly on the textbook). Once I figured that out I changed my entire strategy for that class.

Some may consider it harsh, but, as a student, you just need to figure out what each particular teacher wants, figure out a method that you can achieve that (even if some of the requirements seem ridiculous), then grit your teeth, put your nose to the grindstone and put the hours in to get it done.

Like I said, the top 25% of qualified applicants got into my nursing program and less than 30% of these people graduated. There was a LOT of anger, mainly because the teachers did not support us very well/give us a good understanding of what was needed -- BUT, in life you will find that there are always going to be people who do their job poorly, and that is true in every single profession. I felt very much on my own and it was very stressful. But this was not abuse, it really was just a bad program. I made sure I went to clinicals and class early, put in a TON of time studying and reading everything I could, and I was one of the few that passed. Nursing school is not easy so make sure you are correctly labeling what your frustration is about. Again, there are so many details unclear in your posts but make sure you're trying to look at it from all sides especially before stating it is 'abuse'.

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Specializes in Critical Care.

I also agree that I have no idea what is really happening from the description posted here. Very vague. You will need very specific examples to escalate this.

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If you really believe you are being treated that badly at the school, why not start looking for another program? I certainly would not continue to pay tuition to any school in which I felt I was being mistreated or getting poor quality education. We all know that there are some poor quality programs and individual instructors "out there." If more students "voted with their feet," and either avoided such programs in the first place or left programs when they found themselves having a bad experience, those programs wouldn't be able to survive. But even bad programs are always chock full of students -- go figure.

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It's alright Ayvah, I understand. I also use to deny that abuse in the nursing field existed, in any part of it too! It's uncomfortable to admit that nurses can do harm too.

I'll have to go to another school. I have a bunch of advanced degrees, so at least my spirits aren't crushed because of the experience.

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To make the story more clear for people, this is it:

There is abuse in a program, which no one inside the program has denied, including the head and the dean. I know that, because I have talked to them.

There is no where in that network of people to go to, because the faculty can do whatever they want without disciplinary action. I have went through the entire chain of command at the school. Which is something a lot of people have done.

But it is an abusive environment, with no one to go to.

Outside of the standard answers of "go up the chain of command," what can a person do about this problem?

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