The "Nursing Games" claims it's first victims...

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I posted on another thread recently how nursing school is like "The Hunger Games." Today was a particularly rough day. I heard the cannon sound for several of my fellow classmates. They failed the required drug calculation test and have been dismissed from the program. I feel so sad for them. It just really, really suck to have put in so much time and hard work, not to mention money, to be admitted into the program and then get dropped the first month. I can still see the tears. Blerg!

I posted on another thread recently how nursing school is like "The Hunger Games." Today was a particularly rough day. I heard the cannon sound for several of my fellow classmates. They failed the required drug calculation test and have been dismissed from the program. I feel so sad for them. It just really, really suck to have put in so much time and hard work, not to mention money, to be admitted into the program and then get dropped the first month. I can still see the tears. Blerg!

I didn't see your original blog, but I LOVE the analogy. It's so true!!! I've been a nurse for 10 years and I still remember the fear. Sad, isn't it?

mc3:nurse:

I just took the dosage calc. test. At our school it is 100% or you fail. You have 3 attempts, with tutoring being mandatory after a fail. What I don't get is how anyone could fail? I took the math entrance to the program, and it was MUCH more difficult than this.

I agree with others, i want my nurse to be right 100% of the time when administering meds to me!

Specializes in Pediatrics.
What I don't get is how anyone could fail? I took the math entrance to the program, and it was MUCH more difficult than this.

!

I agree with you 100%. But al I can say is, you have to grade them to believe it! If you have the formula wrong, even if the math is right, the answer is wrong. This is a common mistake. What I try to grind into the heads of my students is, "does your answer make sense"? I swear to God, I have seen answers for I've drip rates of 600 gtt/min. They are so happy they have an answer, they have no ability to see if this number can be applied to real life! Recently in clinical, my student had to give a patient 6 pills (25mg each,totaling 150mg). It was a safe dose, apparently the pharmacy didn't carry the 100s or 50s of this drug. In the real world, this sometimes happens. But for my tests, I would not make this a test question, I feel like its too tricky. The answer needs to be logical enough for it to be implemented in real life.

Specializes in Cardio-Pulmonary; Med-Surg; Private Duty.

My class graduates RN school in May 2013. We are all technically LPNs now (some of us got licensed and are working as LPNs, some didn't bother with the LPN because we are working other jobs until we get our RN -- but we've all completed the schooling necessary to sit for the NCLEX-PN exam).

Several people gave an answer of 7.5 gtt/min on our last exam. How the heck do you give half-a-drip? :confused:

i took mine last week. we have to take 1 each semester.....85 or better on first,90/2nd.95/3rd and 100 in the 4th semester....we do get 3x before you are out. i passed with a 95 and i thought for sure i received a 100....when i looked over my test i just couldnt get where i came up with an answer....it was a very stupid mistake...i had the formula with all the correct numbers in place but the answer was way off....all i can think of is that i punched in the wrong number on my calculator and just went with that anwer.....or did my mind wander for a sec and i thought of the number 8 instead of 1 when i was actually writing the number?...i dont know....i felt awful cause like you all said i could of killed someone....makes me wonder if i should continue....

this was just our first one so it was the simple DS/DH X Q with changing GR to MG,or G to MG etc......

i know i am going to slow down and RECHECK!!!......

you know how you have to have a 2nd nurse check your calculations....maybe they should do that on a test as well.....JUST KIDDING!!!!!!!!!!!.....just a bit of humor!!:cheeky:

This is why I choose not to go for my RN after LPN School.....

First, I have a major problem with the way Nurses are educated........my PN program was all self taught, and I wasnt going to pay one more penny to have an instructor read lecture slides to me word for word like its story time in kindergarden. I understand everyone self teaches, but how much is the question? Personally, Its pointless to come to class just to have instructors read from sheets to us, and I wasnt about to pay another penny for it..... What is so special about Nursing that they feel they need to create a culture of fear and intimidation, and graduate less than half of its students when other allied health programs and even medical school often have better retention rates.

My RT program graduated 75% of the class, and my Cardiovascular perfusion program that im currently in has only lost 1 of 15.....with 1 more year to go....

Second of all, I disliked that Nursing School is like the Hunger games, "Survival of the Fittest", a Social Darwinism experiment, .....its like many programs and instructors want to turn Nursing into military school, and they wanna run students in to the ground and make their life a living hell and frighten them out of the profession, and thats not what Nursing is supposed to really be all about, .....especially for a program based on caring.

Lastly, I hated my program, and was afraid it was like this everywhere. We got tested on things we never learned all the time, ...we never got rationales for our questions during exam review, and we hardly got exam reviews anyways. My instructors took 6 points off exams for missing even if you are sick with shingles, ....and their justification was, "if you miss, youre at an advantage" .....yea im at an advantage because studying is the first thing on my mind when my skin is burning hot. .....and my particular program was also disorganized....their were plenty of inconsistencies between the book and the notes, and made it even more difficult.

I have plenty of respect for Nurses, but I hate the way they are educated. Its just not right some time......

At my former school, no one ever failed the medication test because you received 'assistance' from the instructor if you didn't pass it on the first attempt. Yes, the answers were changed. At my former school, after a test is taken, the test is reviewed by a committee. If a certain question is answered incorrectly by a student, it is thrown out....no one has come up and said, "Well, what about the students who actually studied the material and got the difficult question right?" At my former nursing school, students are spoon fed the material on the mid term and final exam. Yes, I am glad to say that I left my former nursing school.

It's brutal out there! The last class that just graduated started with 75 students and only 14 finished the RN program.

Specializes in Adult Internal Medicine.
It's brutal out there! The last class that just graduated started with 75 students and only 14 finished the RN program.

Why did you go to that school?

Well, gosh...this topic is terrifying! I've always been really good with basic stats/algebra, but I'd love to start studying up on these drug calculations tests. I start nursing school in January and the thought of all my hard-earned work going to waste by failing this test is giving me the shivers. Does anyone have any study guides they can recommend? Either a website or a book or both?

My teacher taught us the desired over have formula. Once you got it is a piece of cake! Everything is metric, which is a breeze as well. If the desired is in grams, and what you have from the pharmacy is in milligrams, you just move the decimal on the grams to change it to milligrams. Then you divide the desired (what the doctor ordered) by what you have. There is a little more to it than that, but that is the gist of it. Much better than dimensional analysis!

Well, gosh...this topic is terrifying! I've always been really good with basic stats/algebra, but I'd love to start studying up on these drug calculations tests. I start nursing school in January and the thought of all my hard-earned work going to waste by failing this test is giving me the shivers. Does anyone have any study guides they can recommend? Either a website or a book or both?

http://Www.dosagehelp.com is good. But just remember, the easiest formula to use is (dose ordered, /dose on hand) X volume. Also, know how to convert within the metric system. What has helped me was remembering the unit (liters, grams) from largest to smallest = grams...milligrams...micrograms, and that whenever converting from one to the other you are just moving the decimal point 3 spaces either to the left (bigger) or right (smaller).

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