A lot of tension between students and faculty in my BSN program

[Lemon Bars]

Hi nurses and fellow nursing students! I'm in the second semester of a BSN program. It feels like there are some issues with the organization of the program and that there is an abnormal amount of tension between students and faculty. I'd like to tell you about my experience and then perhaps you will tell me if these are issues worth confronting or whether I should just shut up, study, graduate and move on. I think I'll make a list to organize my thoughts.

1) We have two nursing instructors who were hired the week before the start of this Fall semester. They are experienced nurses but they seem unprepared and seem to be just "winging it." We missed two clinical days because one newly hired instructor had a pre-planned vacation so we had to make up the clinical hours giving shots at a flu clinic, doing a case study assignment, and working at a health fair booth. The other class has been chaotic to the point where students often don't know what the assignments are, when the assignments are due, or what the instructor expects in a completed assignment.

2) We do a huge amount of work at home before each class meeting and quiz. Sometimes there is no lecture at all, and it's up to us to learn the material on our own. We've been told that this will help us develop our independent learning skills, but it feels like instructor laziness. It takes much, much more time to learn on your own without a teacher explaining things in lecture. Last semester faculty in all departments at the university went on strike. This did not result in the loss of clinical hours and I philosophically support the right of people to strike if they think they are being paid unfairly. But now I wonder about faculty morale. Might faculty be putting less effort into their teaching or preparation because they feel underpaid?

3) We pay for and use two electronic programs to supplement our learning, Elsevier Adaptive Quizzing and ATI. Many of the students feel that the content of these programs does not match up well with what we are learning in class. Many of the adaptive quizzing questions are way too difficult and many of us cannot get through the assignments without pausing to look up every answer as we take the quizzes. The ATI program has helpful videos but the ATI tests have quite a few errors, and we complain about this after every ATI test. The instructors don't seem familiar with how these program work or exactly what material they cover. You ask them why such-and-such was presented a certain way on the programs and they are clueless as to what you are talking about.

4) Our program seems extremely heavy on book work and very light on clinical work. We have classes on nursing informatics and nursing theory and nursing research, but so far there seems little emphasis or time to practice clinical skills. Our physical assessment class was taught as if we were all training to be nurse practitioners - "Patient comes in off the street with XYZ symptoms, how do you interview and assess the patient, what diagnostics and labs do you order and what medicines do you prescribe?" The process was exactly like walking into a doctor or nurse practitioner's office. I thought I was training to be a floor or community nurse, not to become a nurse practitioner or researcher. I don't even know how to start an IV yet! Other students have expressed similar feelings.

5) Last one. My nurse informatics professor asked for feedback because none of the students seem motivated about his class. I told him via email that I didn't want to learn how to develop relational databases, design EHR user interfaces, or manage EHR implementation phases - I just learned how to open a patient's hospital chart a month ago. Now he has asked me to stay after class on Friday to discuss this and I'm not sure what else to say.

Thank you if you read all that. I wonder if I should have done an LVN program first and then bridged to an RN/BSN program. Am I being lazy or short-sighted? Do I just need an attitude adjustment? Help! Thanks!

[AvaRose]

ATI will be extremely useful to pass your NCLEX. In addition, even if you have to look up the answers right now doesn't mean you aren't learning. Clinicals are not the same as actually working and you will learn how to do something while on the job. Your goal now is to learn what normal is and what it means when your patient is not normal and how you would help fix the problem. Oh and how to write out long involved care plans and/or concept maps...make Google and quizlet your best friends and if your are lucky your teacher will use Elsevier questions directly from the site on your tests. Always nice to get one or two questions you have seen before.

[vintagemother, BSN, CNA, LVN, RN]

Nursing school is hectic. I attended a private LPN/VN and a community college RN program. Both were hectic/ stressful.

I do give both programs credit, however, for teaching me what I needed to know to be successful as a working nurse.

The students who are successful took learning into their own hands. We reached out to classmates for support, we did a great deal of self teaching, and yes-- utilized those resources such as ATI, Elsevier, etc to help reinforce knowledge.

Nursing school was hard, but worth it!

[HarleyGrandma, RN, EMT-B]

At our school we have almost no 'lecture' time, that class time is spent doing group activities that apply the concepts from that weeks reading material. I know how unsettling and different nursing school feels, it is unlike anything I've ever done before. (**I'm an older, third career nursing student). To make the most of our experience we have to be able to let go and trust in the program. I would try really hard to not get involved in any of the faculty issues, or collegewide politics. Ultimately they are out of your control, and you don't have the time to give to anything other than your studies!

Make use of any resources available to you like the Tutoring Center, remediation with instructors, librarians, ask good students ahead of you in the program. Good luck!

[HouTx, BSN, MSN, EdD]

OP's post is very articulate with a very cogent analysis of the issues. I was looking for some clues about the program setting, but when I came across the use of "university", I concluded that this was a traditional (not commercial, for-profit) program, so I'm going with that assumption.

There is a severe faculty shortage going on - many reasons, too numerous to review. This gives rise to the employment of unprepared instructors. Just because you have an MSN does NOT mean that you have an appropriate skill set for education. Education is a 'whole 'nother' discipline. Accreditation bodies do require a minimum number of graduate hours that (hopefully) are related to the discipline of education, but this is absolutely not a sufficient basis for educator competency. Last-minute instructors are most likely to have expertise in a specific clinical area, but they are not fully versed in all the resources, tools, and processes involved in the program. So - no - they don't understand the ins and outs of ATI.

Baccalaureate curriculum includes more theory & ground-level information about ancillary subjects - like informatics and research... that may not appear to be relevant to students. This content is mandatory. A lot of the background information (such as relational databases) is VERY essential to understanding how EHRs work. Just like statistics is essential for understanding research basics. Students are more concerned (and rightly so) about their 'immediate' horizon... which focuses upon patient care competence. So there is normally a built-in tension and resentment from students who feel that they are being forced to take 'fluff' courses. When I talk to the same people a few years after graduation, they have a completely different perspective.

Lectures are beginning to disappear from the educational landscape - based on evidence that other instructional methods are far more effective. "Flipping the classroom" is gaining ground. In this model, students must read and study on their own prior to coming to class. Class time is then devoted to activities that clarify and reinforce the learning. Those of us who actually enjoy lectures are obviously not pleased with this change but it is happening everywhere, even in medical schools.

My final thoughts? I think OP is going to be a great nurse... the ability to carefully observe, organize data & analyze phenomena (of any kind) is essential to a great diagnostician.

[llg, PhD, RN]

My impression of the OP was the same as HouTx. I wondered what type of program it is. Is it a large state university school? A small private, for-profit school? etc. Also, is it fully accredited and well-respected? Does it have a good NCLEX pass rate and good graduation rate? Do it's graduates find good quality jobs in the local community easily? What do upperclassmen and recent graduates say about the issues raised by the OP? How do they feel about the quality of the school?

If those sorts of indicators suggest that it is a good quality school, then my advice to the OP would be to take a deep breath and "go with the flow." Yes, it sounds like there are some current problems at this school. New faculty hired at the last minute often take a while to get acclimated/orientated -- that's to be expected. Yes, there is a lot of academic foundation that must be learned in nursing that surprises many students. Keep calm and endure the bumps in the road with grace. Life will never be perfect and we all need to learn to live and ever thrive in an imperfect world. However ... if indicators like the ones I mentioned above suggest that this is not a really good, respected school ... then I would be really concerned and be looking for any possibilities of transferring to another school before investing any more money.

[caliotter3]

Your post sounds as if you might have legitimate complaints but the best viable option is to soldier on through or actually do the work to find a program to transfer to. Fighting issues or spending an inordinate amount of time on the program's shortcomings will only detract from your goal: finish the program and get cleared to take the NCLEX.

[la_chica_suerte85, BSN, RN]

Haha, it sounds like you're going to my school (except we didn't have informatics). This seems very typical of nursing school, unfortunately. When they say that you will learn everything in the real world on the job, they aren't lying and patience to get to that point is a must. There have been days coming home from work that my head feels stuffed full of information in one day than I had ever received in my whole 3 years of nursing school. Sometimes, you gotta go through the motions. You can throw your hat in the ring and try and get involved with your school's administration and try to make changes for the better, but as soon as things start changing the way other students wished they would have, they start complaining about the changes and how it's not 'exactly' what they wanted. It's nursing school. The biggest challenge is maintaining your patience.

[Buyer beware, BSN]

Yes HouTex,

I think I am understanding your tacit suspicions as to what kind of school this student may be attending. The student I believe is expressing educational quality misgivings that are not altogether unfamiliar to me.

Accordingly, I am skeptical of the validity of the "university" designation as there are many financially troubled, low graduation and retention rate schools who trade off of the use of the word "university" to promote their brands. South University and University of Phoenix immediately come to mind (collegescorecard.ed.gov).

Post secondary education across the board--not only the for-profits--have for a while now incorporated into their business plans the concept of reducing highly educated academicians into benefit-less, flat-rate adjuncts who very often pose as mere window-dressing to game half-hearted accrediting bodies. (Yes, Goodbye Mr. Chips, indeed!)

As a partial result of this misguided (to say the least) policy, many students although young and inexperienced, are not unaware that that they may be getting the academic short-shrift. This is clearly exemplified by many students who do not see the point of learning via "youtube" instead of engaging in rigorous didactic discourse and hands-on instruction in the classroom.

As a direct result, education today is an expensive mess. Replete with many unhappy students and instructors in perpetual debt bondage who were sold a bill of goods and with no equity to show for years of false promises despite all the hard work

[Lemon Bars]

Yes HouTex,

I think I am understanding your tacit suspicions as to what kind of school this student may be attending. The student I believe is expressing educational quality misgivings that are not altogether unfamiliar to me.

Accordingly, I am skeptical of the validity of the "university" designation as there are many financially troubled, low graduation and retention rate schools who trade off of the use of the word "university" to promote their brands. South University and University of Phoenix immediately come to mind (collegescorecard.ed.gov).

Post secondary education across the board--not only the for-profits--have for a while now incorporated into their business plans the concept of reducing highly educated academicians into benefit-less, flat-rate adjuncts who very often pose as mere window-dressing to game half-hearted accrediting bodies. (Yes, Goodbye Mr. Chips, indeed!)

As a partial result of this misguided (to say the least) policy, many students although young and inexperienced, are not unaware that that they may be getting the academic short-shrift. This is clearly exemplified by many students who do not see the point of learning via "youtube" instead of engaging in rigorous didactic discourse and hands-on instruction in the classroom.

As a direct result, education today is an expensive mess. Replete with many unhappy students and instructors in perpetual debt bondage who were sold a bill of goods and with no equity to show for years of false promises despite all the hard work

Actually I'm attending a state university with a good reputation. This is supposed to be the top nursing program in the area, and admission is competitive. I and other students have been stunned by what we perceive as disorganization and sometimes low quality instruction. Many of my junior college instructors were more on top of their game than some of these university instructors seem to be. It's really weird.