Future Nurses are Brighter Than Ever

[M1ST3R3DW1N0_RN]

How do you guys feel that student nurses (in CA) now have to have a 3.5 to 4.0 GPA to even be considered into school? Also TEAS standardized testing has to be at least 90 or above in order to be considered competitive. The GPAs are calculated by Microbiology, two levels Anatomy, Physiology, and overall science GPA. Even if students get past that threshold, they have to write essays, go to panel interviews, and are run through the ringer just to get into school which sorts through hundreds, if not thousands (SDSU) of applicants every cohort.

I'm curious to know if you think you could pass the standards that are employed today for today's nursing students. These students could probably be competitive candidates for medical school, where as in the 70's, 80's, and 90's you probably just had to sign the dotted line to get in. Do you think that if you had to do it again right now that you could get into a program and become a nurse?

I think anybody can become good at something if they do it long enough, especially nursing. But with the level of students that are applying today, the future of nursing looks very bright. I anticipate these new grads will stand on the shoulders of their predecessors and drive the profession into something great.

[mmc51264, BSN, MSN, RN]

So much of what I learned did not have great context. I waited 2 years after my ADN to go back and get my BSN. It made so much more sense after having experience.

I am not saying that new nurses don't care, I just think they have different expectations that what nursing really is. This paired with shortened orientation is not a good formula.

[rn1965, ADN]

I started nursing school in the 90s. It was not easy and took me 3 attempts at applying, and that was with a 4.0 GPA. It was and still is very competitive.

I had panel interviews and had to write an essay. I worked as a CNA prior, for many years and even that didn't give me a leg up.

Could I still get in today? Yeah, I think I could!

[KeepinitrealCCRN]

I don't want a 4.0 GPA nursing student working alongside me. I'd like someone with some common sense, critical thinking skills, hardworking and knows how to communicate with people. You can teach most people the skills to being a nurse but you cannot teach common sense. They need to develop different testing measures for nursing school other than GPAs.

[WestCoastSunRN, MSN, CNS]

Interesting thread!

I agree with @Wuzzie nursing students, in general (regardless of generation) are going to be above average in intelligence and book smarts -- though there are always going to be outliers who challenge that assumption! ?

I did nursing prereqs over 25 years ago and I can tell you - we know a lot more about the human cell, now, than we did back then. That's just one little (pun intended) example that foundational knowledge has certainly grown over the years, as we all know to be true. I agree with @Tegridy though, that with all the learning helps available - in many ways it's easier. No one (nursing or medical) has to memorize what everyone once had to memorize, for instance.

As for the fluff in nursing programs -- I agree it's there, but probably disagree with some previous posters about what it is. In my opinion, nursing absolutely needs a firm grip on psychology/sociology concepts which should lead in to professional and therapeutic communication courses. This is more key than ever in today's healthcare environment - focused on patients as self-managers and care teams as interprofessional collaborators (as opposed to hierarchies and silos).

I think we should throw out nursing diagnosis and instead teach just medical diagnosis (so that everyone speaks the same language fluidly and nursing understanding of pathophys and related pharm is solid). Nursing theory, actually, has the potential to be what (in part) powers the profession to be change agents and advocates for practice and policy changes to the benefit of patients and communities. I will admit I'm not a "theory" person, but am actually experientially learning how it can be foundational to translational research and practice change.

Teaching to the NCLEX is a huge thing in nursing academia now. So you have schools reporting 95-100% NCLEX passing rates but hospitals are picking up big-time slack in clinical education (and yes, even with the basics - not talking specialty area competencies). So then, you're only going to get the quality of education your residency program and preceptors can give you. Not ideal.

[Wuzzie]

1 hour ago, WestCoastSunRN said:

Nursing theory, actually, has the potential to be what (in part) powers the profession to be change agents and advocates for practice and policy changes to the benefit of patients and communities.

I would agree with you if the current theory wasn’t so stupid. Most of them look like someone made an easy observation and the described it in the most bloated terms they could possibly find. Seriously, did they sit there with a thesaurus in their laps?! When I look at a nursing theory and my first thought is “well, duh” how can I take it seriously?

Same for nursing diagnoses.

[WestCoastSunRN, MSN, CNS]

1 hour ago, Wuzzie said:

I would agree with you if the current theory wasn’t so stupid. Most of them look like someone made an easy observation and the described it in the most bloated terms they could possibly find. Seriously, did they sit there with a thesaurus in their laps?! When I look at a nursing theory and my first thought is “well, duh” how can I take it seriously?

Same for nursing diagnoses.

Agreed. And... full disclosure - in my own research I am not using nursing theory, but one from another discipline. That's why I said it has "potential" in nursing. But more to your point - nursing doesn't need it own theories or diagnoses to treat patients and change practice -- we can and should build upon the work of the disciplines we collaborate with.

[Tegridy]

5 hours ago, KeepinitrealCCRN said:

I don't want a 4.0 GPA nursing student working alongside me. I'd like someone with some common sense, critical thinking skills, hardworking and knows how to communicate with people. You can teach most people the skills to being a nurse but you cannot teach common sense. They need to develop different testing measures for nursing school other than GPAs.

Since when is ability to have a 4.0 and common sense mutually exclusive?

[KeepinitrealCCRN]

8 minutes ago, Tegridy said:

Since when is ability to have a 4.0 and common sense mutually exclusive?

Well if you can read between the lines what I was trying to say was grades are not everything. I've seen many new graduates "top of their class" and they are not good nurses. It takes more than a GPA to be a good nurse.

[Tegridy]

32 minutes ago, KeepinitrealCCRN said:

Well if you can read between the lines what I was trying to say was grades are not everything. I've seen many new graduates "top of their class" and they are not good nurses. It takes more than a GPA to be a good nurse.

I would agree with that.

[DannyBoy8, RN]

Undergraduate classes like A&P, Chemistry, and algebra are easier now. The latest round of students who graduated HS since 2014 need to be handled like a delicate piece fine china from the 18th century. God forbid an expectation isn't fully spelled out in the class objectives. They'll collapse like a dying star under the "enormous" weight of an unexpected test question.

[Wuzzie]

Plus we didn’t have the internet. Huge difference.

[hppygr8ful, ASN, RN, EMT-I]

On 4/23/2020 at 10:43 AM, hppygr8ful said:

Here here! I am the master preceptor at my facility and am amazed at the lack of common sense and critical thinking skills many of the last crop of new grads posses. High grade point averages might be an indicator of success in school but not necessarily an indicator for success in the work force.

Hppy

I was asked to clarify this answer even though I thought it was clear. What I mean to say is as someone who trains a lot of new grads is that some not all have some very real problems addressing "Real World" problems through the application of common sense and critical thinking.

Working in Psych is like playing a game of Mental Chess with the likes of Bobby Fischer. One has to be able to very quickly assess, direct action and resolve problems without causing harm to the patient or Him/herself. This is also true of all areas of nursing. I once had trainee 3 weeks in who when faced with angry patient started quoting Paplau's . I said that's all well and good but you are about to get punched if you don't do something.(Mind I wouldn't have let this happen) This nurse ignored every verbal method we had worked on to descalate a patient. After it was all said and done. I asked what she would have done differently...… She could not articulate a response without going back to quoting Paplau.

I have also trained some nurses who openly admitted they had trouble in school who excelled on the floor.

I do highly resent the implication that we older nurses only had to show up and sign on the dotted line to get into school. I suspect (but have no proof) that many of the large. "For Profit schools" do exactly that. I started school in 2000 and had all the same prep classes today's student have. I passed them all with a solid 2.7 GPA. Lucky for me they considered some of my older coursework for a previous degree and bumped me up to a 3.0. I suspect they did this because I won them over in the interview. Nursing school was hellish in it's own way and during the Two year course of study I got married lost my mother-in law and my dad to cancer, had a high risk pregnancy and major surgery. It took an extra two semesters (One off for my mental health and other to finish but I made it passed the NCLEX went straight into a specialty and later into psych and never looked back.

As for colleges being competitive - this is true for all degree programs especially the UC system in California. My 18 year old son has multiple applications out and I hope he gets accepted. If not he plans to enter the military and get a bachelor's online while in the military.

In summation there are all kinds of students - those that excel in the classroom may excel in the real world and some may not. Some that don't excel in the classroom do great in the real world. Each new grad moves forward or backward due to native intelligence, critical thinking and coping skills.

Hope that clarifies my feeling in this matter.