Nursing Students General Students
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Just thought I'd vent a little about this. I always thought that nursing school was going to be a real "trial by fire". It was such a hassle to get in, between all the paperwork and testing, and the school only selecting 50 students out of 600+ applicants. We had so many lectures on attendance, appearance, academics, etc. etc. shoved down our throat at orientation, I thought I'd mistakenly joined the military.
However, a few months down the road, on into the second quarter, it's a totally different story. 43 out of the 50 made it to the second quarter. ZERO people failed. The only people that are out are the ones that chose to quit. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't WANT to see anyone left behind, but it just doesn't sound right that 100% of the class (that didn't outright quit) passed.
In this quarter, we're doing Pharmacology and Administration of Medication. Lots of math. Not necessarily *hard* math (the hardest part for me is apothecary conversions), but it's a lot of math. At LEAST half of the class had SERIOUS problems with such simple concepts as moving decimals and converting grams to milligrams. They can't do these VERY BASIC equations, even though they somehow managed to pass the high school-level NET entrance exam.
Now, get this. We have a med math exam that we have to pass with 100% before we're able to give meds in clinicals. We have 5 tries at the exam before we're out of the program. How many people passed the exam on the first try? 100%! The same people who couldn't figure out that 0.01 times 10 is 0.1 were able to pass a med math exam with 100% on their first try? Give me a break!
And that's not the worst of it. Open book and open discussion exams have become commonplace. And by "open discussion", I mean the instructor literally giving us the answers to about 25% of the exam.
We're going to clinicals giving meds next week, and we have students who can't even do basic freaking math that are going to be drawing up injections and figuring pill dosages. I can only pray that our clinical site is going to be doing unidose so we won't be able to screw it up.
Now, here's where it gets interesting. I'm pretty sure I know why people are being pulled through this time. We have a new Nursing Dept Coordinator. She was brought in because the last 2 coordinators were only achieving about a 15-20% course pass rate (of course, NCLEX pass rates for those classes were 100%). This reason was told to our class by the coordinator herself. So, her goal is to get over 75% pass rate.
But now, I see exactly how she's going to get her 75% pass rate. By holding everyone's hand all the way through the program. I can only HOPE that the NCLEX will weed these people out. And then, when the NCLEX pass rate for the program drops to 20%, I wonder what the Board is going to think.
It's getting to the point where I'm seriously considering reporting this activity to the Board. God forbid these students somehow manage to pass the NCLEX by some miracle, only to kill a patient right after they clear orientation. The only thing that's stopping me is that I know if the Board does an investigation, the school will likely lose their accreditation, which means I'll have to start all over again.
Again, don't get me wrong. I don't want to see any particular person fail. But, not everyone was meant to be a nurse. It's as simple as that. Desire is not enough. If desire were enough, I'd be swimming in gold doubloons right now. If you can't figure out that 0.01 times 10 is 0.1, then you may need to think about another profession.