Do you think some schools are turning out nurses too fast?

S.N. Visit, BSN, RN · Dec 16, 2007

If you are talking about Practical/Vocational Nurse programs , Yes 9 & 6 month programs are dangerously fast. Too much information and not enough clinical time to absorb everything. 12 month for the PN is also fast, but very common. What's the NCLEX pass rates on these 9 & 6 month programs?

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Dec 16, 2007

Wow! A 6-month program? When I was in nursing school back in the early 1970s this issue of "cranking out nurses" too fast was a subject then too. I think the real issue is turning out nurses who are inexperienced. No matter how much time you spend in school learning from books, there is a hands-on, clinical element that you just can't get from books that is missing. That has to be gotten by working with actual patients. Medical students and students in other healthcare disciplines have the same issue going on. But they take it. A resident physician will work at a really minimal salary (less than what a nurse makes) for 3 years just to learn and become experienced in clinical practice. For some reason, nursing education was never set up that way, and I don't think that nurses today would even stand for working as a resident nurse for a minimal salary to gain experience. It would be looked upon as exploitation. There would be a massive uprising and cause an even bigger nursing shortage than we have.

The thing is that hands on work in our society is considered "labor" and no one wants to do it for free. At least, not for very long. So, there is the problem of requiring some clinical exposure as a student and then starting to work clinically with very little experience to begin with and expecting to get full pay. The fact is that it takes at least a year of working after graduation to really hone what you learned in nursing school. And, it is more like 2 or 3 years before you really begin to feel confident about your work as a nurse. What you learn from your books is just as important compared to what you will learn in the clinical area, but you do need to have that background. The thing is that with actual patients, the situations become variable and you never know what you are going to go up against.

Ms Kylee · Dec 16, 2007

I swear I have learned more on the floor as a nursing assitant than I have in the 9 months I've been in my LPN program.

MAISY, RN-ER, BSN, RN · Dec 16, 2007

These schools are doing a disservice to the nursing student and the patient. No one is truly prepared for their orientations after school. I have seen advance degree holders from bridge programs make dreadful mistakes during the basics, I can only assume what other things may happen. I think all programs should have a minimum of clinical hours assigned, as well as, encourage work in healthcare as a pre req for admittance to nursing bridge, or short term programs.

Maisy;)

Jo Dirt · Dec 16, 2007

I think these schools are willy nilly churning nurses out by boatloads-- it's like a faucet and they don't know when to turn it off.

llg, PhD, RN · Dec 16, 2007

In some cases, it has gone too far. Those schools are assuming that the employer will finish the student's education -- but employers are not in the education business and they are not accredited as educators. Even employers with good orientation programs are training the new grad to do a particular job -- not educating them to do many possible jobs in the future.

Such an approach to education promotes a task-oriented nurse who may be able to do the specific task she has been taught in the specific way she was taught by her employer to do it ... but that is not the same thing as being a well-educated professional prepared to make sophisticted judgments in the real and ever-changing world.

anonymurse · Dec 16, 2007

Prospective nursing students need a way to judge schools. NCLEX pass/fail rates are a horrible way to view schools' adequacy. School taught me basic nursing. Kaplan Complete taught me to pass the NCLEX. They're totally different skills, but we have to go beyond that. When I was shopping for a nursing school, I didn't care what or whether a degree attached to graduation or what the NCLEX pass rates were. I wanted to know what floor nurses thought of the graduates they were gaining, and I picked mine because I'd heard from many different sources that this one hospital diploma school's graduates were preferred because they were ready to work. That's the phrase I heard over and over, "ready to work." So I think we what we want to know when judging a school is how its graduates made out during orientation for the first RN job after graduation. At least that's what I was trying to find out, and just to get back on topic, the last school on my list, a 14-month commercial associate degree school, didn't have the worst NCLEX rate, but it had the most (and most dismal) orientation failures (I found out by talking to its graduates, to preceptors, and to the failures themselves).

caliotter3 · Dec 16, 2007

I haven't met any graduates of accelerated programs on the job so I can't comment on their performance. I don't think they would be much worse than the rest of us. I went to a traditional program, and really felt that my program was very, very deficient in preparing me for the real world of work. How can you tell students in writing, during their final clinical that they are forbidden to do a list of procedures at all, yet at the same time tell them they are to consider this final semester as if they were a graduate nurse on their first job? Nonsense.

kxvc · Dec 16, 2007

I'm in an accelerated 16mo program. The program is really only accelerated because we don't have long summer breaks, yet we do have other short breaks.

lindarn · Dec 16, 2007

I haven't met any graduates of accelerated programs on the job so I can't comment on their performance. I don't think they would be much worse than the rest of us. I went to a traditional program, and really felt that my program was very, very deficient in preparing me for the real world of work. How can you tell students in writing, during their final clinical that they are forbidden to do a list of procedures at all, yet at the same time tell them they are to consider this final semester as if they were a graduate nurse on their first job? Nonsense.

Nursing needs to step up to the plate, and emulate what/how other health care professions are teaching/training their new members. Regardles of the fact that they have gone to a Masters/Doctorate as entry into practice, and have shortened the clinical portion of their programs to incorporate mandatory paid internships, they continue to have record enrollments, and interest in their career fields. They have not "dumbed down" their programs to accomodate every hard luck story/life situation. They establish and set the "bar", and that is it. I have not heard of difficulties in these professions in passing their state licensing exams, etc.

Therer is no diffuculty in working after post graduation internships. There is of course a learning curve, but they seem to seamlessly make the transition from student/intern, to practicing professional. What is nursings' problem?

Until we accept and make some hard choices about our profession, we will continue with this insanity of insisting that new grads are required to be able to "hit the ground running" the day after graduation. This accomplishes nothing but reinforce that nursing school is not an " college education", just a blue- collar "certificate and OJT. Certainly not worth of the image, and compenstion of other "real" college graduates.

We will continue to be a "revolvong door" profession", where new grads are "processsed out the door" within 2- 3 years, never to return. And yes, as long as "ABC Community College" churns our new grads every six months, there will be no incentive for hospitals or nursing homes to put any effort into retaining the nurses they already have.

And yes, as long as hospitals and nursing homes are provided incentives to replace American nurses and recruit foreign nurses in their place, there will be even less of an incentive to improve working conditions, pay and benefits to encourage new

nurses to stay.

Lindarn, RN ,BSN, CCRN

Spokane, Washington

showbizrn · Dec 16, 2007

Well stated.

AMEN.