10,000 questions or ELSE

Nurses General Nursing

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My college is mandating that the graduate students have to do 10,000 questions before we are able to get signed off and our ednur form can be sent in for us to take state boards!!!!! The staff make up the rules from day to month one minute we are required to do 5,000 questions then upon turning in the 5,000 questions we were told "OH NO NOW WE WANT 10,000 questions then on top of that we are December 2001 graduates they are saying NOW we do not want any questions done in 2001 in which the 5,000 questions were due Jan 19, 2002 so you guessed it ....most of the questions were dated in 2001. I am so frustrated with my college it is a night mare. Then they added that they would not sign us off either if we do not get 90 percent on the RN simcats.......UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I have taken the RN simcats about 8 times already and I have not made a 90 yet..........it is so so so frustrating .......any comments would be appreciated........I know they say it is for our own good but I am brain drained and I do not feel that this will help me pass the boards at all.

Sounds like the powers that be are getting a little paranoid. Sort of unrealistic expections. Wow, I am glad I do not have to deal with this!

Specializes in CV-ICU.

Check with your state board of nursing and see: what is the state board pass rate of graduates from your school on the first testing. My guess is that they are doing this to you because your school may not have a good passing rate right now and they feel that the more test questions you do the better prepared the students are.

You might also like to check if your school is accredited by the NLN; if so, are they in danger of losing their NLN accredidation.

You may also like to talk to someone at both of these places (the Illinois BON, and the NLN) and tell them what is going on and ask if they are aware of this and is it required by either institution. I think your BON might take a great deal of interest in this, myself, because the school is holding students out of the workplace when there is such a nursing shortage going on.

10.000 ??????? micro just stay what micro doin'...........hehehehhee

Specializes in Vents, Telemetry, Home Care, Home infusion.

My sense it that you are on brain overload!

Stop thinking about nursing for 1 week. Give yourself time to relax, go bowling, movies, stay up watching TV late if you can.

You'll find that you can think clearer after a rest. Jenny's advice good to follow. No one should be held hostage to their education.

Has anyone spoken to the DEAN of the program??

Get several of your classmates together and document your concerns and request face-to-face meeting PRONTO. No response, immediate contact SBON:http://www.dpr.state.il.us/

Hope things improve. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

Keep us updated.

HUH??!! And this is suposed to accomplish what?

Answering 2,000 or 10,000 is not going to make you more knowlegable.

NCLEX has a limit of 200 and something because they have done studies that prove answering more than that is not going to proove your more or less knowlegable.

Answereing questions does not take the place of teaching and study.

I know a girl who tried to "study" that way. All she did is answer questions. No study to back it up. Flunked out first semester. Answereing questions is easy. Teaching and studying take work.

It would seem to me the time spent answereing questions takes away from productive teaching/ and studying time.

Specializes in Home Health.

I would also find out who provides the accreditation to your school, and if you do not get anywhere with the dean, report your concerns to the accreditation board. But I warn you, you will NOT be a popular girl among your teachers. I suggest for that reason, there is safety in numbers, get a letter signed by over half your class.

But, definitely talk to your dean first. After my experience getting my BSN, I have no respect left for institutions og "higher learning." Quite a money-making racket they have going in the RN to BSN programs! It will be quite some time before I ever have the courage to re-enter a college for a masters, and it certainly won't be in nursing!!!

(Thanks for letting me vent!)

Specializes in Nephrology, Cardiology, ER, ICU.

I guess I'm totally out of it. What is this about 10,000 questions? Like an NCLEX exam? What purpose does that serve?

Specializes in CV-ICU.

The thing that I find interesting is that your school is holding you hostages..... If a person GRADUATES in December of 2001, you should be able to take the NCLEX exam within a reasonable time. I have no idea what the "RN simcats" are; they don't even show up when I did a search on the Web.

You have received some good advice here; copy this thread and take it to your classmates. Write a letter to the Dean and get as many of your classmates to sign it as possible; then contact the Board of Nursing. Something is MIGHTY fishy here, and it needs to be checked out.

:eek: :confused: :o

Good luck; and keep us updated.

RN Simcats is a integrated exam that our Nursing computer lab has on each computer and it generates about 90 questions if you are passing with 64 percent.......the test was meant to pass at 64 percent but our powers to be want 90 percent and it is a very hard exam to pass......all the graduate students have taken it at least six times before making a 90 percent on it....I hope they do not ever use it for people to graduate from the nursing program because that would be a horrible thing............Thank you for all of your responses and I am going to follow up with all the advice given....I am so frustrated with my college and yes we are in dire trouble of our students not passing the state boards on the first go round and we have students who have graduated in 2000 still out there trying to pass boards.......It is a bad thing going on and we are caught in the middle.

Specializes in ICU, nutrition.

I don't understand this 10,000 questions business at all. I did not get much out of answering questions without studying material. I graduated in December 2001 as well and I took the NCLEX in February. I took the Hurst Review and made sure I understood how to get to the correct answer, even if I did not know exactly what it was. My nursing program required us to take the Mosby Assess Test (300 questions, I believe) and pass a computer simulated NCLEX test at 75% which was 100 questions. Our department head RECOMMENDED we answer at least 1000 questions, including those required. Our school's pass rate is over 90%.

If you've met the requirements to earn your degree, the school should not be able to stop you from taking your boards. They certainly should not be able to change their graduation requirements AFTER you graduate! I would talk to the dean and then to the SBON. I can't believe that what they are doing is legal. If you graduated from law school you would be able to sit for the Bar. If you have graduated from nursing school there is no reason you shouldn't be able to sit for state boards. Back before they started having a computerized testing system, everyone took the test at the same time and the school had no control over when that time was.

Yes I agree with you 100 percent. I am not the wiser from answering these questions at all. I was reading in the nurses spectrum and my college was mentioned in this month's issues for the colleges that have nursing programs on probation. And Illinois is one of the states where many people have not been too successful with passing state boards according to the research. I figure the problem is not with the students it is with the curriculum. I feel it is the format of how the nursing program is teaching the students. Sometimes we are responsible for unneccesary things such as .....we have to go to the different community centers and give injections in the senior level of nursing. More time could be spent doing something else like maybe more clinical experience in ICU or Telementry or any kind of ICU and I feel my college need to utilize the student's time better we are in class from 8am to 8pm that is a 12 hour day and very exhausting and then expected to have read the previous assignments and be ready for discussion the next day .....impossible I say.....

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