Do nursing schools actually conciously REALIZE they are being ridiculous or is it a..

Long Term Care Columnist / Guide · Feb 6, 2004

I was the class representative for the two years of my nursing program, attending faculty meetings and generally being the liaison between the instructors and the students. Guess what? Between evaluating current and prospective students, developing the curriculum, worrying about funding sources, going to inservices, grading tests and term papers and care plans, dealing with the bureaucracy at the college and the clinical settings, and trying to manage their OWN lives, these people don't have the TIME to figure out new and interesting ways to torture nursing students.

Yes, they can be tough and demanding---just like nursing. They can be unpredictable and unreasonable---just like nursing. Nursing school is hard because NURSING is hard, and if you want to survive it and graduate, you jump through their hoops and do their projects and deal with screwy test questions........because that's what it's like in real life. You don't have to like it, but you suck it up and get through it so you can deal with all the variables out there in the big wide world. And if you can't handle nursing school, you're not going to do well when the answers are no longer given to you and there's no instructor to save your butt when you make a mistake!!

sharann, BSN, RN · Feb 6, 2004

mjlrn is right about nursing school and nursing both being hard etc...There is much to learn and it has to be done in a short amount of time. This is the system. If they have a good rep it means they have a high NCLEX pass rate. I do think though that sometimes the schools DO go above and beyond what is necessary in the form of being unreasonable. It depends on the faculty. When students are nurtured, they blossom. When they are resentlful they become pirranas. The instructors that actually have seen a live patient recently tend to be the most realistic and helpful. Tell her to hang in there, it can be done!:)

Roland · Feb 6, 2004

work bedside! My aunt and mother made fine livings as medical record administration nurses. Heck, my aunt Joyce made 80K a year inspecting records at nursing homes into her late 60's even when she was half NUTS. In addition, it is simply not professional in my humble opinion to expect students to be able to answer questions not even covered in the lectures, or reading material. Most textbooks come with peer reviewed test banks, why not use those instead of "in house" test banks? Students, pay good money to attend nursing school (or it is paid on their behalf by the government in some cases) and the LEAST they should be able to expect is a FAIR test. If you tried that sort of thing in the private sector you would face being sued or possibly arrested for consumer fraud. Grades matter, and if you give me an "unfair" test that causes me to get a "C" instead of a "B" or an "A" then you very well might impact my ability to attend graduate school, either in nursing or some other field (I have a good friend for instance that applied and was accepted to IU's school of Medicine with a BSN in Nursing with a 3.4 GPA, and 980 MCAT's). That in turn affects my ability to provide for my family. Will my son not be able to attend private school or have braces for instance because some instructor can't take the time to ensure that exam questions actually reflect material that was assigned? Is there ANY accountability, and if so what form does it take? Both my wife and I have purchased, and reviewed MANY NCLEX books. Invariably, the NCLEX questions tend to be fair, reasoned, and relatively easy compared to perhaps the MAJORITY of test questions we have faced at nursing school (especially in her case).

To give you another example, I took one of my wife's advanced human physiology tests (a nursing prerequisite class) to my physiology professor in Muncie a couple of years ago. She indicated that SHE probably couldn't pass that test with more than a "C" and SHE has a Ph'D in physiology from Boston College!

If I were somehow "forced" to teach in such a nursing program and behave that way I would at least have the termerity and honesty to say something like this on the first day of class:

"look we are unfair, vicious bastards who are going to do our level best to break you. Everytime one of you breaks down in despair or drops out, my associates and I will go out for cocktails because we know that means we've done our part in supplying Wall-Mart with a steady supply of workers! If one of you goes over the edge and commits suicide we'll have a real party! It will take everything you have just to pass. If you get better than "C's" it will have more to do with good guessing, than superior study habits and test-taking skills, and it will mean we have failed. If you don't think that's fair then turn your maggot asX's around and don't let the door hit you on the way out. You've been warned."

caroladybelle, BSN, RN · Feb 6, 2004

Well, maybe they are following your plan to lessen the supply to drive pay rates up.......you know so that their grads can make the most money possible and take care of their families.

Just a thought.....

Roland · Feb 6, 2004

if your're going to be unreasonable the LEAST you can do is to be upfront about the whole thing. I don't like hypocrits, and those who engage in double-speak. I can respect an evil bastard if he or she at least has the honesty to proclaim their true nature.

caroladybelle, BSN, RN · Feb 6, 2004

Originally posted by Roland
if your're going to be unreasonable the LEAST you can do is to be upfront about the whole thing. I don't like hypocrits, and those who engage in double-speak. I can respect an evil bastard if he or she at least has the honesty to proclaim their true nature.

I have never known any school to say"I want to fail half of ya'll this semester" yet many do. I don't believe that the government requires that disclosure yet.

And who is being hypocritical, you want to limit the supply of nurses, but get upset when a school implements methods to do so...when it harms you and your own.

Did you/your wife request pass rates for her school BEFORE starting the Nursing classes? That would have been a logical step, as education is a very important and expensive investment. And did you think/investigate about how that Nursing School got that good reputation? In addition, most preNursing students hear some horror stories about Nursing school that prepare them about how tough it is. Any of these actions could have clued ya'll in.

RNPATL, DNP, RN · Feb 6, 2004

Originally posted by Roland
That in turn affects my ability to provide for my family. Will my son not be able to attend private school or have braces for instance because some instructor can't take the time to ensure that exam questions actually reflect material that was assigned?

I would at least have the termerity and honesty to say something like this on the first day of class:

"look we are unfair, vicious bastards who are going to do our level best to break you.

Roland - while I can understand your frustration, I think your post takes it to the extreme. I mean, one or two test grades are certainly not going to impact upon your ability to get into grad school. Certainly, if the college's grading policy is unfair, then something needs to be done about it. But, if I recall, most programs offer a course description and discuss how grades are managed for that course. Yes, there is a great deal of reading and a lot of material to study. But like other posters have said, there is a lot of clinical material that needs to be covered in a very short period of time (takes us back to the entry-level issues all over again).

These instructors MUST prepare people to be safe nurses. Can you imagine how immense that level of responsibility must be? Testing and clincials are one way to weed people out of the program who should not be there. Sorry, but it is the facts of life. This same type of thing goes on in med. school, law, and the list goes on and on. There is a lot of information and it needs to be learned and students need to be tested. If you pass, great, if you get a "C" rather than a "B" .... study harder next time. If I were you, I would study more than the average student, to ensure that your son gets those braces (it was a joke, please don't take me serious :roll )

Remember, to the college, nothing is more important than their NCLEX-RN pass rates. The BON evaluates their program based on their pass rates. NLN evaluates their program based on their pass rates and students, ones who are informed, should be evaluating their program based on pass rates.

Trauma Columnist · Feb 6, 2004

Looked at your post because I went to Marian College for my ADN (I was already an LPN). When I moved to Indy in 92 (hubby stationed at Ft Ben), the waiting list was three years long at IU! So...I guess that it hasn't gotten any better. There is an ADN to MSN program still there too, right? I was interested in that after I got my ADN in 94, but we knew we wouldn't be there long enough for me to complete it - so I didn't start. I wish your wife good luck - its hard, but worth it. Take care...

rn-jane · Feb 6, 2004

Roland, i empathize with you and your wife. There is no doubt about it nursing school is hard, but real-life nursing is harder..I understand there are nurses in your family but when was the last time they were on the floor during a code, or when you had to lifeflight a young girl because of an overdose or dealing with a family because their young wife or mother was dying. These are all critical issues that are addressed, granted there is alot of reading assisnments and paper work involved to get there. I'm sure they are very intelligent and supported their families well with their advanced degrees but it's different from the mgmt level and doing life and death bedside nursing. Nursing is not for someone who wants only to make money, it is a calling and if you go into nursing for the cash you will learn to hate it. What you got to understand the main objectives of the nursing school is to prepare you to pass the test. Buy your wife several nclex books as you go through each section of nursing study all the questions, this helped me immensely in nsg school( a little advice given to me by a former instructor ). I hope your wife does well, just remember for all the crap you have to put up with it is worth it in the long run.

TraumaQueen · Feb 6, 2004

I have yet to find anyone who didn't think that at least part of nursing school wasn't a complete and total drag.

We did so many teaching projects, group presentations, etc.... At the time, I thought they were utterly retarded. I don't like depending on a group of people to do their fair share of a workload. And, now that I'm precepting new nurses and working on a presentation for a skills day to teach to ICU nurses, I can appreciate what those teaching projects taught me.

We were assigned ridiculous amounts of reading as well. I don't think they actually believe you can read ALL of the material, but I think they expect that since you've likely already gotten this far in college, you know how to filter out the crap, and take in the important material.

All you can do is hang in there and do your best. And, my best suggestion would be for your wife to get together with her advisor and try to figure out what she can do to be better prepared for exams.

I know that's probably not helpful. Nursing school is a means to an end, and even though at the time, most of it seems like complete crap, those classes were put together the way they are and approved by lots of different educational committees...... I always tried to think that maybe they knew something I wasn't aware of. :)

memphispanda, RN · Feb 6, 2004

One thing they told us when we complained about things like this: when you take boards, it's not likely you will have heard of each and every thing they include on your exam. Part of the job of the nursing school is to teach you how to read and choose the correct answer to a question through critical thinking, even if it's a question about a subject totally foreign to you.

Forget the reading. There's not much point in doing all of it. Perhaps your wife can pair up with a couple of people and split the reading, make outlines, and study from the outlines. Maybe she needs to concentrate more on the information contained in the charts and boxes instead of on the actual reading.

I am a Dec 2003 grad, so I just had this struggle. Once I realized I can't know it all, school became a lot less stressful for me. I focused on learning and understanding the disease process (or whatever) we were covering instead of focusing on the 400 pages of reading for the next day of class. I also found that for me, it worked much better to just glance over the reading before class, listen and learn in class, then read the information that I didn't understand from lecture alone. I graduated with honors.