Do you think interviews for nursing school can lead to discrimination?

[SilverNova]

I am currently in my final quarter of nursing school at my local community college. There wasn't an interview process when I applied, and everyone was accepted based on grades, work experience, and volunteer work. One of my nursing instructors let us know in class that they were adding an interview process to requirements of acceptance. She was talking about how it would help weed out the students that couldn't make it in nursing school or wouldn't make good nurses, despite good grades and work experience. All the other nursing schools in my area have an interview before acceptance into the program, and my community college was the only one that didn't. Deep down this kind of bothers me because I feel like if you have the grades, work experience, and volunteer work, someone's subjective opinion of you shouldn't stand in your way of following your dreams. I know that a lot of people don't make it through nursing school, and some don't make good nurses despite graduating and passing the NCLEX, but i find it wrong to deny someone with good grades and completion of prereqs. That is two years of your life or more. It also personally bothers me because I have had social anxiety my entire life. I feel like if I was interviewed, I may not have made the cut despite good grades and 5 years of work experience as a CNA. I don't want to spend the rest of my life as a CNA because I'm awkward and fidgety. I just does not seem ethical to me. I am aware that when you graduate as a nurse you will have to face the interview process, but I have been offered two jobs so far at my clinical sites based on my performance as a student nurse. I was able to prove myself, and I have worked with enough nurses to get letters of recommendations. I feel like overcame a lot of my personally flaws by hard work. If I was interviewed I would not have had that opportunity. Nursing is full of gate keepers and it really bothers me sometimes.

[Workitinurfava, BSN, RN]

37 minutes ago, mhwilson2389 said:

I know I’m a little out of the topic of discussion or category entirely, but please read…I have about 200 pages of evidence(my explanations as well as course requirements, student handbook policies) and several audio recordings as well as several agreeable students from multiple semesters and even countless RN's who vouch for the schools unethical decisions and favoritism tendencies.

To make it short and to the point I am a 29 year old male who attended a 3 semester AAS RN program in Little Rock, AR. I had been aware the previous semesters of the unorganized and unfair dealings that the schools teachers use. In saying that come the last semester myself and others were prepared by secretly recording many of the conversations between the teachers and ourselves if/when came the time to justify the truth with hard evidence...…….

Note: I know whoever is reading this is probably thinking this guy is just mad because he failed but if you can honestly read this with an open mind and open heart then I would be grateful - if only for just taking the time to read it...but also any helpful advice or contacts that could help...thanks....

Real quick myself and many others are accusing some(not all) of the teachers of favoritism, grade manipulation, misguidance on many things(personal advising meetings where they would knowingly misguide on testing focal points, not keep their word about teachings and advice given)…………We have audio recordings of these teachers contradicting their own teachings as well as the other teachers, our assigned textbooks and what we have been taught during our duration in nursing school, as well as the national standard or rule. When approaching some of these teachers in a private meeting/setting and confronted them about possible mistakes they may have made or possibly were unaware that they said/taught was incorrect(all this in a professional manner and tone) some of these teachers would get very defensive and harp on the fact that I am just a student and they have been an RN for X amount of years and that they were correct in what they taught or advised...all without any explanation or reasoning behind any of it...……..at the time during class they would always stress that if what they say was different from that of the book, then always go with the books info because that is where our test questions would come from......which would in-turn lead to us trying to save our grades as students by wanting explanations after the exams to what their own made up personal experience/opinion test questions would come from and then again they usually never had explanations, just jump on the defensive again...…...later I found out that the students who they seemed to favor would privately meet with them and some students claimed to get 10 or 15 questions (out of 45-65 questions) given back to them secretly. I know this is true, because at mid-term I knew who was passing and who was failing, and would talk to students and at the end some would be 30 plus points ahead of where their point totals should be.

We have audio of them admitting to helping some students with exact same situations and then letting others fail, all by personal opinions of the individual.

I myself worked full time as a tech in the hospital at nights and school 5 days a week from 8-5pm. I literally learned to live and function off 3 to 4 hours of sleep per night...….now this was my less than ideal situation, and I am not blaming any of this on that, but it gives insight into how much effort and stress that went into this last semester. The teachers Im guessing got a negative view of me simply on the fact that I always looked tired and probably uninterested in their lectures......in my defense I was always recording the lectures to go back over them later and take my own better notes, and the other reason was because I could not focus in the class room with 100 plus students, being sleep deprived and easily distracted by sounds and talking etc......that is the only reason I gave to get on their bad side, because I have always made sure that I handle myself in a professional and friendly manner.

ALMOST DONE: 2 days before graduation, I was told that they were not going to allow me to makeup a presentation that I overslept for, that was worth a large percent of our grade in peds...…...on top of that they allowed another student(who was infact in my same group) to not only makeup the same assignment, but redo it, because she would have failed if they did not allow her to make it up. Another student who failed and was going through the grievance process with the school, had many of the same arguments as myself and even got a representative from the NAACP who threatened a lawsuit and later found out that she was cleared without having to do anything. There is literally so so much more evidence and accusations but I am not going to mention it here.

I hired a lawyer to write a letter and investigate, and he found in the handbook that a teacher has the authority to allow/deny any individual student a chance of a makeup assignment that he/she missed or even to retake a test all on the basis of personal choice(basically if they liked them or not, or were feeling good/bad in that exact instance). He told me that even with all this evidence that it would cost a lot to go to court and they even probably have the upper hand being a private school and with their policies to be able to do whatever you want to your students grading wise.

Listen I was cheated out of my degree, career and future as an RN...…….I nearly killed myself for that degree.....now I doubt I can get accepted to any school around here because I failed. The worst part about all of it was that they had me thinking that maybe they were right and this career was just not for me because of some low test scores(granted I was cheated out of points and given incorrect test questions and answers) but it wasn't until the exit hesi exam(a national and untampered with test) that I scored near the best in my entire class and via review highlighted all the areas that we were taught during all of nursing school and my real proof that I knew the info and 150 points higher than our class average score...…..according to statistics it put my chances of passing the NCLEX first time at a greater than 98 %.

If you can help me with anything, attorney, or professional who deals with this sort of thing, contact numbers or similar cases from the past that students fought and won...……...This school (BHCLR) should not be allowed to be teaching students, they have scored lower than 80% for the first time NCLEX pass rating for several years, 69% and then for my graduating class they somehow manipulated the numbers to try and save their accreditation(the AR state board of nursing revealed that they had 216 students take the NCLEX that semester with 170 passing and still only getting 78%...by the way my class only graduated with 70 students....somehow they got the state board to keep them from losing their accreditation and government benefits......please this school should not be enrolling future RN students and then miseducating them for their own personal gain to keep their jobs safe as teachers and administrators and making sure that there will be a % of students to fill the seats for the next semester etc...

Thank you for reading my depressing situation...

email: [email protected]

- Matt

After reading all of this, maybe it is a blessing in disguise. Some of the unfairness you speak of happening in the schools happens in the work place, not everywhere and all of the time but it does happen. The nursing field is heavy in politics, who likes you and who you know. If the nursing field is your only option then, take it as a loss and start over somewhere else. As I said, it is a who knows who type of field and if you fight the school, you will be fighting a lot of opportunites to pass. I don't think it is worth it to fight the school because you said yourself that you were lacking sleep. Nurses bounce around from here to there and someone knows someone. In your case, just pick of the pieces and move on. Pick and choose your battles. Save your energy for the bigger fights. Working nights and going to school during the day is hard. Maybe you can work prn, part-time , or try to get on days. You can do it, you can pass school. If you go over this stuff again, it will be a breeze. Try to get back into the same school.

[Lemonlife]

Interviews can unfortunately perpetuate discrimination, particularly against minority students. It's disheartening to see that many of the individuals benefiting from this process are often white women and I guarantee most of the women who disagreed with the owner of this post fit that description. It's unjustifiable for a student to excel academically, volunteer extensively, garner exceptional references, and maintain top grades in prerequisites, only to be rejected due to biases present during interviews. Furthermore, bias can significantly impact scientific research, and the disparities within fields like nursing, where decision-makers are predominantly white women, exacerbate these issues. Anyone who denies these realities is simply ignoring the pervasive nature of discrimination, regardless of their level of education. FYI, I know this post is old, I'm just coming across it.