Five sue over nursing-school ouster

Sorry, yes, I meant matriculation. Brain is fuzzy today.

I heard that a nursing school in my area (Dallas) has a low matriculation for their nursing students. Apparently, they accept everyone who applies, take their money for the first semester, and fail out a large percentage of them. I won't name the school, though. But some could probably guess which one I am talking about. I wanted to apply to that school until I found out the truth.

Absurd... even with your "exceptions to the rule" comment.

It's not a rule... it's a hackneyed cliche.

My two primary clinical instructors were both full-time nurses as well as clinical instructors and both were excellent... as nurses and as instructors.

I too have had excellent instructors HOWEVER...all of them kept their hand in real nursing, that is, they still worked as nurses. Per diem or part time in some cases but they still walked the walk, KWIM? The majority of the not so good instructors were always the ones who got into teaching because they couldn't hack it anymore, or were never good to begin with, or who liked power trips. Most were married and had hubbies bringing in a decent pay, so it didn't matter that they got paid peanuts.

There were benefits to working during school at the hospital where you did the majority of your clinicals...the main one was you learned an awful lot about some of your instructors from people who had worked with them in the past. So you knew who was a dingbat, who hated non-traditional students and who was racist/sexist. And sadly, there were a few racist/sexist ones in there. You knew which ones you couldn't trust, because they were not competent nurses when they were practicing. (40 years ago)

I actually believe that a current nursing license and an MSN is not enough to teach..I believe that teaching shouldn't be your only gig. You should have to work at least one shift a week as a practicing RN.

Nursing schools can pretty much do whatever they want, from what I've learned. My own B.S.N. program has policies that deny you the right to review your final exams, have high school grading system [93-100 = A's] even though we are a University, and we're required to pass all final exams with nothing less than a 78 [Which doesn't sound that hard, until you see the exams].

And if the higher ups feel that you are a "trouble maker", you won't stay long. They will find something to remove you for.

All so that their NCLEX passage rates will improve.

The rule of not reviewing the final exam is probably posted in the nursing student handbook for each school. It is listed in ours under the testing and grading protocols. We were told from the beginning of class in the first semester that review of both the midterm and final were non-negotiable, but we could review unit exam up to 2 weeks after the date it was given. We do still try to persuade the instructors to change the rule, but we know that they will not. The point is that we were told at the beginning and were given the handbook for review.

To any current nursing students: review your nursing student handbook. You will be able to verify policies if you think that something in the department is against policy. If so, take the concern to the teacher or department chair. It is also good to review what is expected of the nursing student. We were encouraged by our teachers to review the new expectations of a second year nursing student when we entered our 4th semester.