ABSN program survey question

Nursing Students Pre-Nursing

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I'm currently in an ABSN program. This is the 3rd ABSN class the university has had. I don't think the teachers have the ABSN experience to taylor their class towards the ABSN students. All of our classes are held in 8-week block formats. An entire semester of classes is completed in 8-weeks.

Here's my problem with the program, and I want to know if all programs are like this, or if other programs deal with the problem better. Ok, here's the situation:

All of us ABSN students have previous bachelors degrees, and many of us have been in the "real world" working in a career for some time. Now, we want to change careers, and we enter the ABSN program.

I believe that the program is so fast that the teachers should give us the material for us to learn, and we can learn it. They do that, but in addition, they give us lots of busy work to do, such as write lots of papers. Now, for the traditional BSN students, I feel that giving them some busy work is ok, because they've never been in college before, and need to "pay their dues", so to speak. They have lots of time to do the busy work and do well in school.

Us ABSN students have been through college before, and giving us this busy work doesn't benefit us in any way. It is counter-productive because we have less time to study for more important things, such as meds and all the NCLEX stuff we are learning.

I feel like maybe in other ABSN programs, the teachers understand this and wouldn't give as much busy work to do. All this busy work really is frustrating to all of us, and it really isn't necessary.

Question: does your ABSN program have as much busy-work as the normal BSN student, or do they cut out some of this bull-sh*t work to concentrate on more important things to learn.

Any thoughts?

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Specializes in home health, neuro, palliative care.

Can you clarify what you mean by "busy work"? The papers the BSN or Accelerated BSN students write at my school are more than a matter of paying dues, but I suppose it would depend on the assignment.

~Mel'

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Sure, by "busy-work", I mean things like many reviews of research articles; assignemnt after assingment on proper APA-style writing; writing papers on operating room observations; doing a research paper on a nursing theorist; writing several nursing process papers (which in my opinion are a complete waste of time, and I think they are complete BS!); writing a very detailed paper on how to properly complete and document giving a physical on a patient (this one actually does hold some merrit).

You get the picture. These types of assignments are things that take up many, many, many hours to complete, when we should be doing important things, like actually trying learn pharmacology, disease's, and things like that. It is very frustrating to have to go through all the stuff that maybe a freshman straight out of highschool may benefit from, but not for grown adults who have already paid our dues on busy work. This ABSN program should not give us these BS types of assignments when it is such a short program, and we need to spend your time on more important things.

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I just started my ABSN program, but this semester two of our classes are only dependent on exams, HESI, and finals. The third is online (Ethical/Legal), and we do have to do some busy work - post to a discussion board once a week, in proper APA format with citations and take a weekly online quiz (open book) on the chapter we were supposed to read. We also have to write one term paper and do a revision. We essentially take exactly the same classes as the regular students the first 2 semesters, just one extra in each, and we don't "accelerate" until the last 2 semesters (3: Med Surg I&II, Psych; 4: Commnity Health, Mother/Baby/Peds, Leadership, Preceptorship). We're on regular semester schedule too, except semester 4 they may extend by a few weeks. Most of these programs are relatively new, so admin and faculty are also still learning it seems like.

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"Now, for the traditional BSN students, I feel that giving them some busy work is ok, because they've never been in college before, and need to "pay their dues", so to speak. They have lots of time to do the busy work and do well in school.

It is very frustrating to have to go through all the stuff that maybe a freshman straight out of highschool may benefit from, but not for grown adults who have already paid our dues on busy work."

What makes you think that all traditional BSN students are freshmen straight out of h.s. that have never been to college before with lots of time? Many nursing students have been to college before. Many are not straight out of h.s. Many do not have lots of time. Many have jobs and families.

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Specializes in home health, neuro, palliative care.

I think the amount of writing varies from program to program, with BSN being much more demanding than ADN. I never got the impression that our ABSN program was anything different, only faster, but I could be wrong. I know we have the same ethics classes, and definitely nursing process and case study stuff. If your program is new, maybe there is a way to bring this issue up to the Dean without sounding like you are complaining, just feeling overwhelmed.

~Mel'

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Can you clarify what you mean by "busy work"? The papers the BSN or Accelerated BSN students write at my school are more than a matter of paying dues, but I suppose it would depend on the assignment.

~Mel'

I agree with this completely. Writing papers is by no means "busy work" and it's something that you'll be doing alot of if you decide to further your education.

I would take the classes as they are laid out and wouldn't make any waves on something that is that basic. Writing papers is simply, a part of college.

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Specializes in Adolescent Psych, PICU.

Well no offense but your in a BSN program, it's just accelerated. Your going to do all the BSN work, just at a much faster pace.

And most of the BSN students in my program are not kids right out of school, many have previous degrees and some have masters degrees, most of us work full time, have children, are married, etc. I don't know anyone in my traditional BSN program who DOESN'T work actually!

Writing papers is not "busy work", I'm a senior in my BSN program and I think those paper are actually important. It's part of holding a professional degree.

I know your probably feeling overwhelmed and not seeing the big picture are this point, but you will! Good luck and hang in there! Nursing school IS very overwhelming, it is supposed to be!

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Specializes in Neuro.

As a fellow ABSN student, I understand where you're coming from. My first two quarters we (all 23 of us) had our own classes with our own faculty and our own requirements. The only papers we wrote were clinical case study papers so we could figure our way through the whole nursing process.

This quarter, due to faculty shortages, we were put in lecture classes with the traditional students. One is a junior level class and one is a senior level class. There are papers in both, partly due to the University requirement of having to write 2 papers of a certain length in one's major, but partly because they (in general) need that extra practice at writing papers.

One of my papers was turned in in parts to my clinical instructor. After having read our multiple drafts of our papers this quarter, she is actually fighting for my program to be exempt from the paper requirement for future classes because "you guys don't need to be doing this and you would benefit more from doing something different". She also has to read papers from her traditional clinical students, and she has remarked to us many times that our caliber of writing, analysis and critical thinking far exceeds that of the traditional papers she has been reading. This may be due to our previous college experience, not to mention that we are concurrently enrolled in graduate-level nursing classes where we also write analytic papers.

So after having received that feedback from my clinical instructor, I certainly have been led to believe there are differences in the functioning of my class versus the traditional students. I get frustrated in these blended classes because it seems as though the instructors are dumbing down the material. One even does very minimal during class time (and class time is usually optional) because she KNOWS most of the traditional students don't go to class and so she doesn't feel she should bother doing much during scheduled class time. So we spend hours and hours listening to lectures online because she feels there's no point in lecturing in person to 23 people (since we ALWAYS go to class and are often the only people in the room).

While I certainly agree that not all traditional students are straight out of high school or have no previous college experience (I was planning to apply to the traditional program, myself), the general atmosphere of the traditional students at my school says otherwise. I hear them sitting in the back of the classroom bragging about how drunk they got last night. I hear them talking on their cell phones during lecture. I see them blatantly sleep through lecture material, or leave class while the instructor is lecturing. The blatant disregard for the instructors and the classes in general is frustrating to me as someone who does highly value my education.

Anyway, off the soapbox and back to the subject. All in all I wrote (well, am still writing) 6 papers in 10 weeks, ranging from 5-30 pages in length. Some of the papers I have written I have felt to be worthwhile, and others were just frustrating to spend time on. But honestly, this goes equally for my undergraduate and graduate classes, so I don't really feel it's busy work. It's just another way to assess your thinking without making you take a test. One of my graduate teachers said that she'd honestly rather make us take a midterm or a final exam but because they don't really do that in graduate school, she "had to" make us write papers. And so we did.

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What makes you think that all traditional BSN students are freshmen straight out of h.s. that have never been to college before with lots of time? Many nursing students have been to college before. Many are not straight out of h.s. Many do not have lots of time. Many have jobs and families.

Didn't mean to step on your toes when I said this. What I mean is that the demographics at my school, and most schools for that matter, show that the majority of traditional BSN students are those that are in college for the first time, right out to of high school. Now like me, there are plenty of non-traditional students out there. However, if I walk into any traditional nursing class, it mostly made up of the freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors that are in college for the first time, and haven't taken too much time off of school since graduating high school (ie: late teens to early twenty's age range.) There will still be a handful of non-traditionals in those classes, but they are a minority population, and those are not they people I'm talking about. It is the classes and teachers, not the students. Hope this helps clarify things.

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Didn't mean to step on your toes when I said this. What I mean is that the demographics at my school, and most schools for that matter, show that the majority of traditional BSN students are those that are in college for the first time, right out to of high school. Now like me, there are plenty of non-traditional students out there. However, if I walk into any traditional nursing class, it mostly made up of the freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors that are in college for the first time, and haven't taken too much time off of school since graduating high school (ie: late teens to early twenty's age range.) There will still be a handful of non-traditionals in those classes, but they are a minority population, and those are not they people I'm talking about. It is the classes and teachers, not the students. Hope this helps clarify things.

I'd be interested in seeing your source for the demographics of "most" schools.

Peace,

Cathie

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I agree with this completely. Writing papers is by no means "busy work" and it's something that you'll be doing alot of if you decide to further your education.

I would take the classes as they are laid out and wouldn't make any waves on something that is that basic. Writing papers is simply, a part of college.

I totally agree that writing papers is a part of college, and getting practice at writing papers is needed. That is why schools require English, History, Psychology, Sociology, and a variety of other classes that teach you how to write. It is something that probably every ABSN student has already had to do many, many, many times. So do I feel that "busy writing" can be left out of our program, because it is something that all ABSN students have had to do for many years already? Absolutley!!!! And furthermore, if any ABSN student doesn't feel that he or she is capable of writing a paper, then they should NOT be enrolled in the ABSN program. That person needs to go back and take basic English and writing courses before doing an ABSN program.

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