Having to teach yourself?

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So, I'm curious if other programs are like this. The program I'm in it seems like we have to teach ourselves the majority of the material. They will put stuff on the exams they never went over in class. It's not in the PowerPoints or class notes. Never gets mentioned. In Fundamentals, we were never shown how to work dosage calculations, so I spent an entire day teaching myself by watching YouTube videos. I was fine in first semester doing this because the material I didn't find difficult. Now that I'm in second semester, I feel it's going to be a bigger problem. I failed my first nursing school exam today, and I'm upset but determined to do better next time.

Just seeing if this is happening a lot out there or if I picked a doozy of a program. ;) It gets frustrating to say the least.

It's a community college, but the state changed all the curriculum about 5 semesters ago, so all the kinks are still being worked out. I have the dosage calculations down just not I&O since we haven't been taught that. I'm going to watch YouTube videos I guess to learn how to do it. Plus our program is very unorganized. We are told 5 different things by 5 different instructors even though it's the same question asked to each of them. There's no communication between each instructor it seems.

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It's a community college, but the state changed all the curriculum about 5 semesters ago, so all the kinks are still being worked out. I have the dosage calculations down just not I&O since we haven't been taught that. I'm going to watch YouTube videos I guess to learn how to do it. Plus our program is very unorganized. We are told 5 different things by 5 different instructors even though it's the same question asked to each of them. There's no communication between each instructor it seems.

In my experience, that's pretty normal. ATI will tell us one thing, our lab instructor another, and our lecture professor another. It can be frustrating.

I'd focus on the objectives at the back of the chapters, bolded words and any charts/boxes in the text. YouTube videos are a great resource, too.

FYI, I&O is just intake and output - fluids going in (orally, IV, etc) and the fluids coming out (urine, vomit, etc). It's like a balance check :)

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Specializes in Oncology.

I am sorry you did not do well on this exam. If I were you I would go and look at your class syllabus and see if all the topics on the exam were listed there. Where there any topics on the exam there were not listed on the syllabus? Remember, the syllabus is the "contract" of what you are responsible for knowing and what is required of the class.

When I was in school, I would look at the syllabus when getting ready for an exam and used it as a sort of study guide. I would also go through each chapter and look at the different sections and get the main points and then read the chapter summaries. Then I would go through and do the chapter practice questions. I also had the Saunders NCLEX review book that I would use (using my syllabus as my guide).

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The syllabus just has vague topics for instance it only states nutrition, elimination, mobility/immobility, etc. Then when we get to the topic they give us a concept map that lists the exemplar. So like the exemplar for elimination had bph, urinary calculi, hypospadias, and a couple extra disorders/issues, but that's all it says along with the page numbers that correlate to those issues. That's why we were thrown for a loop about the I&O. We never had any experience doing those. We are going over those in the F&E part which is next week.

But I'm going to shake it off, watch videos about I&O and next time I'll ace those suckers :)

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In my experience, that's pretty normal. ATI will tell us one thing, our lab instructor another, and our lecture professor another. It can be frustrating.

I'd focus on the objectives at the back of the chapters, bolded words and any charts/boxes in the text. YouTube videos are a great resource, too.

FYI, I&O is just intake and output - fluids going in (orally, IV, etc) and the fluids coming out (urine, vomit, etc). It's like a balance check :)

Thanks for the tips about IO. One problem was like half a page long. And it said at so and so hour you stop the continuous infusion because your giving an IVPB and it had 3 BM on there. We didn't know how many mL we were suppose to count for that, if any. I was told after the exam you don't count BM. But I'm going to learn and I'll ace those next time. I hope. :)

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Specializes in Critical Care, Trauma.

In my classes we are expected to have our reading and homework finished for whichever chapters we're going over BEFORE we have a lecture on it. We'll have a pre-quiz and then the teacher will lecture over the most important details. For pharmacology, for example, we have our textbook "Pharmacology, 8th Edition" from El Sevier with the online content and other resources, and we also have our pharmacology book from ATI.

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Our program is almost all self-taught. For each class, we attend a mandatory overview that's 1.5 hrs. long and then we're expected to spend 45 hours on the class, each of which is one credit. The classes are well-organized, though, and broken into units and then modules with clear objectives. Each unit has an exam, which we take whenever we feel we are ready to pass it. We're usually working on two classes at a time, and our professors are always available if we need anything.

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When I go to class, more than half the time I expect the instructor to divide us into groups, assign case studies, we spend 1-2 hours working on them, and then the last hour we're presenting them to the rest of our classmates. Unfortunately, our program has labeled this style of teaching as "flipped classroom," although I don't think they're integrating the correct format of flipped classroom teaching. It's lazy teaching - my instructors don't prepare lectures because they inundate us with busy work that's hardly conducive to our learning. I've only had two instructors who have been excellent and actually teach, explain, and review the material for us. I've never had so much group work in classes before.

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Specializes in LTC.
I read the assigned chapters but it doesn't always stick in my mind. I'll be honest too, I do not like reading. It's hard for me to sit down and read a fiction book that I find interesting much less a textbook lol. I don't know why that is maybe because I don't retain the info well when I sit and read but I'm trying to do better because I know it's very important in nursing school. I'm going to try different things the next go around. It's on F&E and acid base, so we are getting into the fun stuff. :)

Yes, my program was like that. It was frustrating to say the least.

Don't try to sit and read the chapter all in one sitting! Break it down into sections. Read for 30 minutes, and then take a break. That helped me retain information more easily (I had a hard time retaining information). Also take any practice tests that are at the end of the chapter or on any of the CD's the came with your text book.

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We had over 100 powerpoint slides this week. There isn't enough class time to go over all of that, let alone all of the reading that goes along with it. We are expected to teach ourselves a large portion of the content that we are responsible for.

We do have a dedicated class to learn dosages. Intakes are included in this class. This isn't even a NUR class though. It's AHS (allied health services.)

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My school does this. It's called a flipped classroom. We almost never get lectured to. We teach ourselves at home and then come into the classroom to apply it. So we may spend a class going over case studies and forming nursing dx and goals/interventions for them. I actually love this model once I got used to teaching myself. I know better then any professor how I learn best. It's a lot of responsibility to teach yourself, but then nursing in general is a lot of responsibility. The good part is, is that if there's something I'm not grasping, my professors are very supportive of answering questions. I think this is an important area and may determine if your school is legitimately interested in teaching students. Research the flipped classroom module and it may help you see it from a different perspective.

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Specializes in Med-Tele; ED; ICU.

I would describe my program as largely "self-taught."

The instructors served more as guides, references, and proctors than as actual teachers... at least outside of the clinical arena. Even in the clinical arena, we had few opportunities to perform actual procedures on actual patients simply due to the dearth of quality clinical slots.

While I would have preferred better clinical training, I loved the approach to the content which gave me the freedom to study to my weaknesses rather than be force-fed topics regardless of my preexisting experience and knowledge.

Our tests were online and open book (though timed and to be completed in a single sitting) and served primarily as self-evaluations. At the conclusion of each class we were given timed, proctored, closed-book, comprehensive finals based on the ATI tests. At the conclusion of the program, we had to score at least a 90% predicted NCLEX pass on a timed/proctored ATI comprehensive exam.

I don't think it was suitable for all students but for me, it was perfect.

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