Cheating in nursing school?

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Specializes in Geriatrics, OB, Peds, and Med/Surg..

Ok, this is the first time I have posted anything. I have been reading tons of stuff on here for about a year but I had to get some feedback on this one. Recently it was brought to our class' attention that there is cheating going on in our nursing program! I am totally shocked at this. I am a mother of four young children ages 5-9 (twins are 5) and I spend numerous hours away from kids to study and learn to be the best nurse that I can be and some idiots are skating by. :madface: I am in my second semester and supposedly there are students in my class as well as semesters 3 and 4 who are doing this. The students in my class (like me) who work their butts off and a little ticked off to say the least. :banghead: I was wondering if anybody else out there has dealt with this in nursing school? Oh yeah, the story is that if the people with the tests (don't ask how they got them!) come forward then they can stay in the program. The ones who are caught and don't come forward will be dropped with an "F" and their nursing careers are over. They are only cheating themselves but many of us are ticked off! Any thoughts? Sorry to rant on my first post! On a better note, I love this site!!:nuke:

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i would be ticked too. that is so not cool. the bad part for me, is that someone near and dear to me is a 'cheater.' when i try to encourage her to study and do it that way, she just looks at me and shakes her head and tells me that i will see when i get there how hard it is. she said that none of that book stuff mattered in the real world and that with working full time and children she has to do what she has to do to pass....

i have no idea how they get the tests before hand, but she gets it and they pass...i don't know. i don't want to judge anyone and i'm sure that nsg school is hard-anything worth having is-but i would like to know that when i go to my program that i passed and made it through because i worked hard for it.

with that said, keep up the good work in school!

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Specializes in Geriatrics, OB, Peds, and Med/Surg..
i would be ticked too. that is so not cool. the bad part for me, is that someone near and dear to me is a 'cheater.' when i try to encourage her to study and do it that way, she just looks at me and shakes her head and tells me that i will see when i get there how hard it is. she said that none of that book stuff mattered in the real world and that with working full time and children she has to do what she has to do to pass....

i have no idea how they get the tests before hand, but she gets it and they pass...i don't know. i don't want to judge anyone and i'm sure that nsg school is hard-anything worth having is-but i would like to know that when i go to my program that i passed and made it through because i worked hard for it.

with that said, keep up the good work in school!

your friend unfortunately thinks the same as some of the students in my program but i have four young children also and i am doing it the right way! yes, it is very hard and i spend countless hours away from home studying but, like you said, in the end when i graduate i will feel proud that i did it on my own with a lot of hard work. it will be one of my greatest accomplishments! :yeah: take my advice and do it the right way so you can be proud of yourself! thanks and take care! :wink2:

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This is really terrible. I haven't heard of cheating (yet) in my program.. only first semester. But I remember last semester when I was taking A&P there was discovery of a cheating student. Most of us were nursing intent students and were agitated by it. What if that person made the program and not us? Unfortunately, my professor was going through a lot of personal tragedy at the time and didn't handle it as wholly as I think she should had. She just started counting the tests every time.

I don't even know how you could cheat in our program!! The professors treat the tests as if it were the key to all unknown knowledge in the world. (As they should!) Tests are counted before handout, counted when handed back, no bathroom breaks during the tests, etc. etc. etc. I like it that way because it helps those of us who try hard.

On the other hand, these people are only doing an injustice to themselves. I doubt they'll pass the NCLEX.

Sorry you have to deal with this. I wouldn't be too happy if the people "fessed up" that they still got to stay in the program. They should have to retake everything. Who knows what their grades would have been?

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a couple of students in my class cheated here and there. i mean, they would compare answers during the exam. people in the class knew, but they didn't say anything about it. it's was just kind of a 'do what you need to do' attitude about it. they didn't have access to anything beforehand. they all passed the nclex just fine. i never saw the attractiveness of cheating because with all the stress you go through of possibly being caught, you can just channel that into actually studying.

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Specializes in ICU/Critical Care.

I'm probably going to be the only one to say this but if a student has to cheat to make it through nursing school then they shouldn't be a nurse. If you have to cheat it makes me think that you are not competent.

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Specializes in Family Practice/Primary Care.

I work hard in school. If I knew of a classmate cheating I would turn them in. I know of one girl who will soon graduate, and does not deserve to. Sadly, I had no evidence of it, so she escapes, and I know how awful of a nurse she will be. I loathe cheaters.

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If these cheaters make it to NCLEX and IF they pass....They are the ones who will (first ) give nursing more of a bad name and (secondly) these are the ones who will eventually lose their license because of a lapse in critical thinking that results in a pt dying....

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Specializes in ICU/ER.

My school had cheating--in fact an alleged friend of mine actually cheated off me---I had let her look at my paper to "inspire" her to start hers--ya right..and low and behold when it was time to turn in the paper there were paragraphs verbatum from my paper in her...I could not belvie it, Friend said not to worry teacher will never ever notice as there are 45 papers to grade. Well I was beyond sick. This paper was a huge part of our grade with out getting a B- on it I would not be able to pass the class, and it was one of the supposed "weed out classes" .

Long story short- I called my advisor and with out giving names told her the story, then I on her advice called the teacher and once again wtih out giving names told her the scenerio. The teacher had me write a sealed letter explaining all my research and time line on preparing my paper. She said she would not open my letter till all the papers were graded adn if both papers next to each other resembled plagerism then she would pursue. Well she did, "friend" haD to take the class over.

Part of me actually felt bad because that class was un realisiticly hard, then part of me felt like how could she jeopordize me and my family and how hard I worked to benefit her. This "friend" was actually pretty smart, did not have to study like I did. Just lazy, that paper was a pain to write and she placed me in harms way in trying to get herself ahead.

For those who say "well they cant cheat on Nclex" in my humble opinion Nursing school is way tougher than Nclex, Nclex test for min competency. I think they are making nursing schoool tougher and tougher each semester which is going to breed more cheating.

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Specializes in Operating Room Nursing.
My school had cheating--in fact an alleged friend of mine actually cheated off me---I had let her look at my paper to "inspire" her to start hers--ya right..and low and behold when it was time to turn in the paper there were paragraphs verbatum from my paper in her...I could not belvie it, Friend said not to worry teacher will never ever notice as there are 45 papers to grade. Well I was beyond sick. This paper was a huge part of our grade with out getting a B- on it I would not be able to pass the class, and it was one of the supposed "weed out classes" .

yep same sort of thing happened to me in first year. We had a 3000 word essay on society and culture and I spent hours working on it. A friend in my class wanted to borrow it because she wasn't sure how to go about writing the paper so I lent it to her and she just handed in my paper with her name on it. I was pretty angry but I didn't do anything about it because it was a 'friend'. I never lent her any more papers after this and she eventually dropped out of nursing school because she failed most subjects.

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that is ashame that people stoop so low. what do you accomplish by cheating? do you really learn from that, i don't think so and time will truely tell.

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Specializes in LTC & Correctional Nursing.

The cheating in my class was terrible. The sad thing was EVERYONE knew who the cheaters were and had informed the teachers, head of the nursing program and dean on several occasions. It drove me crazy:banghead:. I ended up quitting my job during school so that I could study more and still see my husband and kids but these cheaters were still working, some of them 2 or 3 jobs and bragging about how much $ they were making and we all knew that they had no time to study. It created a lot of tension in my class. In my last 3 terms were started to do the ATI program and it FINALLY became clear to the school what was going on when the cheaters got terribly low scores on the ATI tests but were doing good in class. So in the end the cheaters had to start studying b/c the ATI scores were 25% of our final grade and if you didn't pass the ATI chances were that you would fail the class. It still bugs me though b/c I tried so hard...but I guess like others have said you can't cheat on the NCLEX...and I know how hard I worked and I am proud of myself for it! :D

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