Goodness it seems like everytime I check this board I'm coming across a thread about someone getting expelled. I feel terrible for them. Nursing school was hard enough to get into and to be expelled, well that's not a pleasant experience.
I'm a lil worried about myself now. I'm not the best student. We just took our first exam, havn't got the grades back yet, well I think I did okay. But what concerns me the most is the fact that I think my cliinical instructor might not like me so much because I ask too many questions. I don't have a medical background like others and I guess I'm too eager to understand everything and okay I'll watch what I ask from now on so I don't waste her time.
I hope my clinical intructor doesn't fail me just because of me being annoying.....once we fail a clinicals we're DONE. I also hope I get good enough grades from my classes so I don't flunk out. I've flunked out before and again, that felt terrible. That was many years ago though and I've learned my lesson.
If your instructor is a good one, they will not mind you asking questions. That's what you're there for! How else are you supposed to learn? I feel like I ask alot of questions, alot of them dumb, and my instructor just always says: "There's no such thing as a stupid question." Try not to worry so much :).
If you consider the entire, humonguous population of nursing students in the US, I'm sure it would work out that only a tiny percentage of students get dismissed for behavioral reasons or fail out academically. In my experience in nursing school, my diploma school planned on losing ~1/3 of the freshman class each year -- not because they were in a big hurry to kick students out, but because quite a few of the students decided, after they were in school and started to see what nursing was really like, that it wasn't for them after all. Nursing is sooooo different from most other kinds of occupations, and it's hard to get a feel for what it's really like in advance. In my experience teaching nursing, the students that have failed and been kicked out, either for academic reasons or behavioral-type reasons, were people who weren't trying and didn't care -- they had been counseled and given opportunities to improve whatever the problem was, and had failed or declined to do so (e.g., I had one student who got caught (by me) cheating on an exam -- it turned out (to my surprise!) that the school had a "first bite is free" policy and she was allowed to continue in the program -- and the same student turned around and cheated on her academic work in my class, the very next quarter. Jeez Louise! I caught her again, this time I was able to fail her and kick her out ...) It's usually a lengthy process to get to the point of actually getting kicked out.
I'm sure there are some instructors out there like the battleaxes we hear horror stories about here and in other places, also, but, again, they represent only a tiny, tiny percentage of the overall population of nursing instructors. Most are at least willing to help you succeed, and many will go out of their way to be helpful (gotta love all the codependency in nursing! :)).
In my experience, success in nursing school (like so many things :)) is more about determination and working hard than being the smartest person in the room. Keep plugging along, and best wishes!
We started off with 85 and graduated with 63. None were expelled, they failed out.
We lost the 1st ten in the 1st semester. The rest were primarily lost in course 103 (I guess that may be considered the advanced med/surg) which is the big "weed out" but really it's more or less the students that find out nursing really isn't for them. The 5 or so that failed out and did try somewhat, but maybe missed this or that, (example: focusing on the abnormals instead of really knowing the normals) did come re-enroll and were in the class behind us.
The other few failed out of either acute or chronic, but that was really just 1 or 2 each class. Our class seperated after 103 to divide 1/2 into acute and the other half to chronic, then flip for the next semester, then the next two semesters were family/child/ob or community, take one then flip again, then we all came back together for management. We didn't lose anyone in family or community, but we picked up 1 in family. So out of that 63 that graduated I would say about 5 of them were from the previous class that came back.
If you're concerend about it now I'd say that's a good sign and you'll be fine. Just work hard and don't take anything for granted. I had to work hard (but I pushed myself hard) and it was all worth it in the end. :)
And like others said, questions are good. As long as they're reasonable, it shows you care and want to understand.
On guy in my class got expelled. Well, he was sort of in my class...he was failed the semester before mine and joined our and screwed up again and they let him go again. He fought it both times without success. Rumor was that the first time is was for very bad bedside manner, was taking care of a new born that was waiting to be air lifted to a level 3 NICU. Was trying to interview the parents for his paper due for class while they were grieving over the incubator. The nurse nudged him to stop but he just kept going. Second time I heard he screwed up some meds big time and was always joking about stealing narcotics.
One woman in my class was not allowed to graduate. She was told it was a patient safety issue. Something happened and the school was told she was not allowed back at the hospital. Didn't do an assessment on a patient because she though she had delegated it to another student that never got the message; not that you can delegate that.
I think most (I did not say all) students are expelled for good reasons but just wine and make up excuses why it was not their fault.
I learned in nursing school to get in and get out, keep your head low and your nose to the grind stone. Come to class, study your ass off, and only ask questions after you have asked a classmate and you still don't get it. Generally it is the students that act unprofessionally towards their teachers and make waves that have problems...
As for those asking about being expelled for being annoying and asking too many questions... I think that is a justifiable reason to fail some one. We had a woman in our class that would ask questions that make her sound unsafe and were questions she should have known the answer to even before starting nursing school...i.e. we wear learning in our last semester about CABG (which was a review) from a nurse that came in from a local cath lab. The nurse was telling us that they try to replace veins with veins and arteries with arteries because of the pressure difference in the two, she raised her had and asked "thats because veins are thinner and arteries are thinker right?"...yes we learned that in physio....she said to chew an Ibuprofen to treat a heart attack during our ACLS class...stuff like that, yes there are dumb questions
Specializes in Case management, occupational health.
We lose the most students because they fail out, usually by just a couple points, or even tenths of a point. My friend had to repeat a semester, he had a 76.98, they would not round it to a 77 which is passing.
We have lost some that have failed clinicals due to attitude, etc. One failed for wearing a nose ring, one failed for waving a needle in a nurses face, one failed for falling asleep in clinicals, one failed for taking a picture of the psych unit with her cell phone (because it was supposedly haunted), one failed for supposedly assaulting a client (she didn't, I was there, the client grabbed her arm and by reflex she jerked the patients hand away), several failed because they could not get their care plans to be acceptable.
And we have lost quite a few that just were so overwhelmed they quit.
We have never lost anyone for being annoying. (We have one guy that is so annoying I wish we would lose him), but asking good questions is not annoying, the questions you ask are probably the same ones others want to ask but are to scared to speak up. But if you think you are annoying someone then you might be, take notes and look up the answers later
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Nepenthe Sea
585 Posts
If your instructor is a good one, they will not mind you asking questions. That's what you're there for! How else are you supposed to learn? I feel like I ask alot of questions, alot of them dumb, and my instructor just always says: "There's no such thing as a stupid question." Try not to worry so much :).