Are Nursing schools hurting Nursing?

Nursing Students General Students

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First, please consider the attributes of your personal prototype of The Perfect Nurse. What adjectives would you use? Sensitive, caring, compassionate, patient, intelligent?

Now consider the gauntlet students have to run merely to get accepted into Nursing school.

Are the sensitive, caring, compassionate and patient being weeded out in order to make way for and to reward the competitve? And what is that doing to Nursing?

Hey, I'm just a freshman plodding through my pre-reqs, and my psych class this evening included a mention of "Achievement Motivation." Just trying to put 2 and 2 together, and I sometimes phrase things bluntly to elicit responses (I wonder in which chapter that sort of behaviour is covered?:p)

...which begs the question: How many dumb people pass the NCLEX? Then, how many dumb NCLEX passers also fool their employers?

Well, let's think this through. As the NCLEX is currently designed, plenty of people pass with the minimum 75 questions. 15 questions of every exam, regardless of the total number of questions, are "test" (proposed but not yet official) questions that are being included to test their validity, that are not counted in the score. That means, for a 75 question test, that the person answered 60 questions that counted, and only had to answer >50% of those 60 questions to pass ... So there are nurses out there who got licensed on the strength of having answered 60 questions, and gotten most of them right. How good do you feel about that?

For a lot of us who took the NCLEX back when it was two full (8-hour) days of testing, and answered hundreds of questions on each area of nursing practice, it's v. scary to think that passing the current NCLEX "proves" one is safe and knowledgeable enough to enter practice. The current NCLEX often seems more like a lottery than a licensure exam -- it's seems to be as much about luck (about which particular questions you happen to get asked) as about how much you know.

And I work with plenty of nurses who make all kinds of "dumb" mistakes (not life-threatening, but dumb nonetheless) all the time, and seem comparatively clueless. I'm certainly not impressed with the ability of my current employer to identify and weed out dumb nurses (or they just can't be bothered to).

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Very well: shall we now go "there"? Should we instead be discussing the fact that Nursing is being damaged by too many clueless Nurses? That the NCLEX is far too easy to pass by using dumb luck?

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Very well: shall we now go "there"? Should we instead be discussing the fact that Nursing is being damaged by too many clueless Nurses? That the NCLEX is far too easy to pass by using dumb luck?

I don't know that folks in this forum can really speak to that question. None of us have any experience with the old-style NCLEX.

But it does seem that you're pretty determined that nursing is being damaged by something.

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I raised the question. In response, there have been a few thoughtful answers. There have also been a few knee-jerk answers like "I'd rather have a smart uncaring Nurse than a dumb caring one." So I ask how many dumb ones we really do have?

No, I would never suggest that the state of Nursing today is not perfect.

The Emperor's clothes are just fine. And no, they don't make the Empress look fat at all.

Honest.

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I raised the question. In response, there have been a few thoughtful answers. There have also been a few knee-jerk answers like "I'd rather have a smart uncaring Nurse than a dumb caring one." So I ask how many dumb ones we really do have?

No, I would never suggest that the state of Nursing today is not perfect.

The Emperor's clothes are just fine. And no, they don't make the Empress look fat at all.

Honest.

You've asked a lot of questions (that included sweeping generalizations) and through all of them, you seemed to have the "right" answer in your mind that you were trying to guide folks to get to...hence the consistent reclarification of the question. But that's just my opinion of what I've watched in this thread.

As far as the emperor's allusion....of course nursing isn't perfect....but there's a huge continuum between being damaged by either nursing school or the NCLEX letting to many ... to use your term "clueless nurses" through and the profession being perfect.

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So what are the imperfections and what are possible ways to correct them?

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Specializes in Ante-Intra-Postpartum, Post Gyne.

The reason your test was so long is because you did not have computers that could gauge what level you were at and change the questions according to how you answered the previous question. Also, a person that got 75 questions only needed 75 questions to prove to the exam that with 95% certainly the taker was competent. Some one who say got the whole 265 took that much longer to prove to the computer that they were competent.

I worked my butt off in nursing school and am a honor student who studied very hard for the NCLEX, I am by no way a lotto winner! Many people will tell you the NCLEX today is very hard, and the people that taught my review course told us that they continue to make the NCELX harder.

Well, let's think this through. As the NCLEX is currently designed, plenty of people pass with the minimum 75 questions. 15 questions of every exam, regardless of the total number of questions, are "test" (proposed but not yet official) questions that are being included to test their validity, that are not counted in the score. That means, for a 75 question test, that the person answered 60 questions that counted, and only had to answer >50% of those 60 questions to pass ... So there are nurses out there who got licensed on the strength of having answered 60 questions, and gotten most of them right. How good do you feel about that?

For a lot of us who took the NCLEX back when it was two full (8-hour) days of testing, and answered hundreds of questions on each area of nursing practice, it's v. scary to think that passing the current NCLEX "proves" one is safe and knowledgeable enough to enter practice. The current NCLEX often seems more like a lottery than a licensure exam -- it's seems to be as much about luck (about which particular questions you happen to get asked) as about how much you know.

And I work with plenty of nurses who make all kinds of "dumb" mistakes (not life-threatening, but dumb nonetheless) all the time, and seem comparatively clueless. I'm certainly not impressed with the ability of my current employer to identify and weed out dumb nurses (or they just can't be bothered to).

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Specializes in ICU.

I raised the question. In response, there have been a few thoughtful answers. There have also been a few knee-jerk answers like "I'd rather have a smart uncaring Nurse than a dumb caring one." So I ask how many dumb ones we really do have?

No, I would never suggest that the state of Nursing today is not perfect.

The Emperor's clothes are just fine. And no, they don't make the Empress look fat at all.

Honest.

It's funny that you would bring up sweeping generalizations when you started out this thread with one. And for someone who's still not even in nursing school, you seem to think you have some kind of big picture of the profession that many others are missing. Nursings not perfect, no one ever said it was. There seems to be quite a few problems with the profession; how nursing schools are selecting their students seems to be the least of them. JMHO as a soon to be nursing student myself ;)

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Well, I wish you all the best in your pursuits. And it would be nice if I had The Insight that made the whole world make sense. But it's still at The Nagging Suspicion stage. Something doesn't...quite...seem...right.

Let me offer another example: In three different classes over the past week, the Prof was plodding through the material, then went off-script. "You may see a patient present (X). It has been my experience that you might want to suspect (Y) as a cause." One went so far as to say that stress would be the number one killer in our society, and offered suggestions on how we deal with it personally and clinically.

In each instance, students began grumbling, "That isn't going to be on the test! Why is he/she wasting my time like this?"

Is college now about GPA and a program slot instead of about learning?

There are certainly greater problems in the world. There are certainly better credentialled people to deal with the problems. I choose to use neither fact as an excuse to shut my brain down. What few cells are left deserve to have an active end-of-life experience.

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Well, I wish you all the best in your pursuits. And it would be nice if I had The Insight that made the whole world make sense. But it's still at The Nagging Suspicion stage. Something doesn't...quite...seem...right.

Let me offer another example: In three different classes over the past week, the Prof was plodding through the material, then went off-script. "You may see a patient present (X). It has been my experience that you might want to suspect (Y) as a cause." One went so far as to say that stress would be the number one killer in our society, and offered suggestions on how we deal with it personally and clinically.

In each instance, students began grumbling, "That isn't going to be on the test! Why is he/she wasting my time like this?"

Is college now about GPA and a program slot instead of about learning?

There are certainly greater problems in the world. There are certainly better credentialled people to deal with the problems. I choose to use neither fact as an excuse to shut my brain down. What few cells are left deserve to have an active end-of-life experience.

I'm trying to follow you, I really am....so because there were students in your freshman year of classes that weren't mature enough to see the value of education beyond their next exam.....now college is either about a GPA/program-slot or learning?

Life seems pretty black and white through your eyes. Folks are competitive and have good grades or have compassion, the nursing profession is either damaging itself or it's perfect, and college is either about grades or education.

The world is much more gray through my eyes. I know of folks who are smart, competitive and are amazingly caring and compassionate, I see the nursing profession as an imperfect profession that is striving to address it's weaknesses and I see college as a place of education, which is then objectively measured by grades. Very few big things in life are either/or in my world view.

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