Having seen so many pitiable messages thrown up on this board from desperate students barely surviving nursing school, I wanted to give my two cents worth from a less immediate and frazzled perspective. Let me say that I understand that I'm generalizing. I don't believe for one second that all nursing schools are like mine was, but it seems like many are. And that is something to be concerned about.
For those who are serious about learning and who want to become nurses to apply that learning, nursing school is, by the looks, sounds, and experience of things, maybe not the best place to be at right now. Unfortunately, it is the only game in town nowadays and that's because it's all about the road to NCLEX.
Concepts are poorly explained or else, as I have experienced and seen discussed countless times on allnurses.com, incorrectly explained, or not explained at all. Conceptual understanding is the axis on which much acquired learning swings. Without identifying key concepts, teaching, and learning key concepts, knowledge is hanging by an insecure thread. And it is exactly here - teaching unifying concepts - that nursing schools gracelessly bow out of the game.
The majority of teachers now in nursing schools are not good. Is this why there is a nursing shortage?
The personal stories of weekend activity, the bragging, the pointless anecdotes and meaningless aphorisms - all students who are subject to these monotones are to be pitied for their wasted time and the fatigue of enduring them. Instead of the weekend stories, instead of the dull lazily-delivered aphorisms, why don't they teach? That is exactly the question. Is it ignorance or laziness? (Or, is the problem more structural in nature? More on that later.) More within the realm of realistic possibilities for the student, though, is the question, why don't they - the students - protest? The answer is complicated - one, it's generally a two-year program we're talking about, with a pace that is not to be believed, which leaves students with hardly any time to warm dinner, much less launch and sustain a protest. Often a faint, last hope, the evaluation system at these schools is often broken. In addition, there is the reality that often the professors are good buddies with the nursing school directors (at least the ones who want to make sure they keep their jobs are), so there's no barking up that tree. As with so much, it all comes down to leadership, and there just isn't any. The 'dons' appear to be fairly well cut off from reality.
The teachers as far as I can tell have graduated from the do as I say not as I do university, the same one that imparts a teaching style of - guess what I'm thinking right now ? For example they may throw out a question about heart failure, but inevitably it comes off as sounding like, "what am I thinking right this second is the key thing you should know about heart failure, and if you don't guess what is in my mind, I will say something to strongly imply that you all are not trying or don't know jack?" And then, that's it. There's no further discussion about why that thing the professor had in his/her mind was so important. There's no building on knowledge.
From what I can tell, there is scant teaching anywhere these days, and the cottage industry of nursing "strategy" packages is a booming one indeed, complete with the hard sell and slick language of snake oil salesmen. The fact of their existence absolves nursing schools of not teaching key concepts. Yes, nowadays, you cannot be so naive as to think you can simply enroll in a pricey nursing school, can you? No, you must also be taught separately by Hurst, or Kaplan, Simple Nursing or HESI. Our nursing schools are following and cribbing from them. What does this say about our nursing schools? Not much.
There used to be good nursing schools, ones with great reputations. But I must have missed the news: at what point did these schools decentralize and hand their knowledge, power, and organization over to Kaplan, HESI, and the others? Why in the world did anyone allow this to happen? The problem with weak nursing schools, among so many, is the application. There is very little applied learning in weak nursing schools (clinical rotations), which just makes the learning that much weaker as well. And it skimps on training.
Did my school do a good job preparing students? No. They were disorganized, detached, demoralized and chaotic. But, the staff and professors could also be sociable, personable, and nice in the very fleeting attention given to individual students. But only a tiny number of them (1 or 2) truly went out of their way to make sure they covered the material as well as they could. The others were either not up to the task but tried in their own way, or else they did have the intellectual skills but for one reason or another decided to fall back and not put in the effort. With some of the others, you could tell that they didn't know the material well enough to answer questions. In fact, asking questions was frowned on. The prevailing attitude among the staff was that it was no better than when they went to nursing school. In other words, they were fine perpetuating a mediocre system of learning. Our nursing schools have become nothing more than places where you can study on your own in order to take the NCLEX. Teachers are not needed; only monitors are needed because that's all they do anyway. You will be teaching yourself all the way through.
In addition to mediocre teachers, students must also contend with materials that are internally inconsistent and workbooks with incorrect answers, the final cruelty to the struggling student.
Now, just to show that I am not a total jerk, I will ask the question: or, is the problem structural in nature? When you consider the ratio of volume of material covered to class time, it does make you pause and wonder. What happened? Was it always like this? In whose mind is two and a half classroom hours per week covering 300 pages sufficient? What exactly is the point of those hours? Maybe at some school it was worth it, because key concepts were explained and expanded upon, but not at my school. There was also the issue of students who did not put in the time to learn the material. Obviously you cannot put that over on bad professors. But bad professors nevertheless exist. To what extent one enables another is an open question - but one for another time.
What to do now?
To the majority of nursing students outside the age range of 18-20, honestly I don't know what to say. So I'll address the moms and dads out there because it's the young students that I feel have the best chance and the most hope of getting the most from nursing education. If you happen to be a mom of a teen who really wants to be a nurse, I recommend scouting out the best BSN (not RN) programs in the country and start preparing her or him now. Find good nursing schools, more than one, more than four, and start planning. Now. Unfortunately many well-known and good schools of nursing have shut down. Inadvisably. Maybe the administrations at their universities wanted to play up the 'sexier' programs, and failed to realize the power of a good solid nursing program, much to the chagrin of the longtime nurses and doctors who taught there, no doubt.
But getting back...How can I nutshell this at its most fundamental? (This goes for young learners and adult learners alike.): Find the programs with the best teachers. If you find good teachers, and you are willing to work very hard, you are all but there.
