Help! I failed nursing school.. What should I do?

[Rheab35]

I am reaching out today because I don't know what to do. I am 20 years old and I am currently attending my University for my BSN. Last year I failed my Med-Surg class in the Spring and gotten the chance to repeat it this fall. Unfortunately, I did not pass by 3 points on the final exam therefore I am kicked out of the program. I can't believe I failed two times, I feel like I am a huge failure. I am trying not to give up hope but I don't know what to do and I am trying to find ways to continue my nursing career. I really want to pursue nursing. Has anybody failed nursing school and got into another school/program? I am planning to transfer to community college to try to get my ADN at least and continue to do RN-BSN in the future. Has anybody transferred to community college? I am afraid I won't get accepted even into an ADN program because my GPA is lower than 2.5 because of my nursing courses. Is it possible for me to transfer just my pre-req credits into an ADN program? If anyone knows how that works please let me know or any helpful suggestions that I can continue my nursing career. 

[Hannahbanana, BSN, MSN]

If you want your way, go to grad school to become qualified to teach undergrads in clinical, and join the ranks of those who do it right. We are out there. You’ll be surprised how hard it is.
When I taught clinical I learned that my students were initially objects of pity to their classmates because compared to other CIs I was considered tough. And then, about halfway through the semester, they realized that they were learning a lot more from me than their classmates were precisely because I had higher expectations, provided the ways to meet them, and praised them when they succeeded. Part of the way I did this was the same way new members are brought into other professions where precision, teamwork, leadership, and strength are essential, a modified boot camp mentality. Expect perfection...but communicate why, demonstrate how to achieve it. Over and over.
When you do that, the newbies at first think it’s mean and irrational, and grasp at the NETY whine. But after a few weeks, a few well-placed earned “attaboys” start working, the team begins to strengthen, the learning accelerates, and it comes together. Clinical is partly to get students used to the workplace; getting them to learn their inner strengths is every bit as important to their future as the psychomotor skills they always focus on. When they really work to earn it and they know it, you can’t take that away from them ever.  

[May 2014]

I don't have problems with clinical. If you read my post right, I said you learn by doing not rote memorization without explanation. If you're a good teacher and explain well to your students and teach them in clinical, continue the same and be your best. Don't intimidate those eating their young. 

[Tacocat, ASN, RN]

On 5/3/2021 at 12:17 PM, May 2014 said:

I don't have problems with clinical. If you read my post right, I said you learn by doing not rote memorization without explanation. If you're a good teacher and explain well to your students and teach them in clinical, continue the same and be your best. Don't intimidate those eating their young. 

I'm working on my MSN in Nursing ED...you do realize that these curriculums are set by the state board? 

This "eating their young" trope is getting old -- it's been getting thrown around here lately by student nurses who don't like being held accountable for their actions while in school. 

ETA: Why is holding a higher standard for nursing students such a terrible thing? If we're rehashing tired stereotypes, an appropriately trained nurse can be all that stands between a patient and death. Nursing students should train to be the nurse they would want their loved ones to have. 

[Jedrnurse, BSN, RN]

30 minutes ago, Tacocat said:

This "eating their young" trope is getting old -- it's been getting thrown around here lately by student nurses who don't like being held accountable for their actions while in school. 

 

Amen! It's become a catch-all idea to deflect responsibility for any kind of discontent, failure, etc...

[amoLucia]

1 hour ago, Tacocat said:

 

ETA: Why is holding a higher standard for nursing students such a terrible thing? If we're rehashing tired stereotypes, an appropriately trained nurse can be all that stands between a patient and death. Nursing students should train to be the nurse they would want their loved ones to have. 

YES!

[FiremedicMike, BSN, RN, EMT-P]

On 5/5/2021 at 2:33 PM, Tacocat said:

I'm working on my MSN in Nursing ED...you do realize that these curriculums are set by the state board? 

This "eating their young" trope is getting old -- it's been getting thrown around here lately by student nurses who don't like being held accountable for their actions while in school. 

ETA: Why is holding a higher standard for nursing students such a terrible thing? If we're rehashing tired stereotypes, an appropriately trained nurse can be all that stands between a patient and death. Nursing students should train to be the nurse they would want their loved ones to have. 

I'm working on RN as a second career.  I've been involved in EMS for a very long time, and I've been involved in EMS education for a long time as well (more than 15 years).  I also have a bachelors degree with honors and passed all of my pre-nursing courses with a 4.0, which I only mention to demonstrate that I also understand college from a student perspective.

RN school is an unhealthy mix of moving goalposts, unsupportive administration, curriculum/lectures that don't match the exams, exams that are far more difficult than HESI and practice NCLEX exams, and exam questions that don't test your ability to provide quality care, but rather your ability to remember the third word of the fourth paragraph on page 837.  Then of course, there's the grading scheme that is allowed to be more difficult than the hosting college and (at least at my program) there are so few points awarded throughout each block that every homework question, blackboard post, quiz question, and exam question is worth between 0.5-1% of your overall course grade.  Bomb a single one of these silly papers and you may have just failed that block.

Is it because "nurses eat their young" or is it because "nursing school was this absurd for us, so we must continue that trend"?  I'm not sure the distinction matters, but I sure wish someone would overhaul nursing education to something that was geared less towards stressing students out and more towards preparing the next generation of compassionate and competent nurses.

[May 2014]

On 5/5/2021 at 12:06 PM, Jedrnurse said:

Amen! It's become a catch-all idea to deflect responsibility for any kind of discontent, failure, etc...

I don’t know what you mean by deflecting responsibilities. I’m not an RN nor BSN. Neither I’m a newbie nursing student. I have been through the whole nursing and back. I’m on the other side of the isle now. I’m glad I did. What I’m saying is, the education is a mess. Wether it’s set by the state board of nursing or not, I do not care. I will change the whole thing entirely if I have my way just for the younger ones coming up. I still stand by my word. You don’t teach people by intimidating them, you teach them as adults, and explaining not reading PowerPoints. You learn by doing not rote memorization.

2 hours ago, FiremedicMike said:

I'm working on RN as a second career.  I've been involved in EMS for a very long time, and I've been involved in EMS education for a long time as well (more than 15 years).  I also have a bachelors degree with honors and passed all of my pre-nursing courses with a 4.0, which I only mention to demonstrate that I also understand college from a student perspective.

RN school is an unhealthy mix of moving goalposts, unsupportive administration, curriculum/lectures that don't match the exams, exams that are far more difficult than HESI and practice NCLEX exams, and exam questions that don't test your ability to provide quality care, but rather your ability to remember the third word of the fourth paragraph on page 837.  Then of course, there's the grading scheme that is allowed to be more difficult than the hosting college and (at least at my program) there are so few points awarded throughout each block that every homework question, blackboard post, quiz question, and exam question is worth between 0.5-1% of your overall course grade.  Bomb a single one of these silly papers and you may have just failed that block.

Is it because "nurses eat their young" or is it because "nursing school was this absurd for us, so we must continue that trend"?  I'm not sure the distinction matters, but I sure wish someone would overhaul nursing education to something that was geared less towards stressing students out and more towards preparing the next generation of compassionate and competent nurses.

Thank you. Finally someone with a spine and clear vision.

[Hannahbanana, BSN, MSN]

It's because nursing and medical care are a whole lot more complicated than they were fifteen or thirty years ago, by far. Even then, we admitted about 25% more students than we had slots for, because we knew that within three weeks our offices would be full of weeping students who always wanted to be nurses like their moms/granmas/aunties/Cherry Ames/the Army nurses in the commercials but didn't realize it was going to be like this, with naked old people, bowel movements, and hard science-- a lot of hard science.

Nursing faculty by and large WANT to see their students succeed, want their programs to turn out nurses who will be safe practitioners s newbies and therefore have the knowledge they need to pass NCLEX. That's why we took pay cuts and then worked ridiculous hours doing lesson prep and correcting care plans and everything else that we do. It's ludicrous to suggest otherwise. I will grant you that not all faculty are the best teachers, but if you want to be fair about that, remember back to your four years of high school and see how many of all those teachers were really excellent. Ask your parents or friends or siblings if all their college faculty were terrific. I think you'll find your situation wasn't so special after all.

Also, I'd be rich if I had a dollar for every student who failed "by just three points!"-- that being that if passing were 75%, they got a 72%, meaning they couldn't correctly answer three out of four questions on an exam, an exam that most of the class DID pass, many with 80s or 90s. Double the money if any of them spent one minute in my or any other faculty office asking for clarifications on things they were confused about, extra help, critiques on their homework, pre-exam review sessions, or post-exam reviews. All of which their better-performing classmates did do. Funny thing about that.

The "next generation of compassionate and competent nurses" is what we all want. Sweet lord, I just had an admission of my own and realized that while I used to josh with my students that the reason I taught nursing was to prepare for the day when I would have competent care when I was old, well, that day arrived .... but the competent part sorta didn't catch that bus. We're talking no offers of oral care after vomiting post anesthesia, no checking back in an hour to see if analgesia had helped, no offer of even a washcloth for pits and hair, no food, lab techs sent to me to draw blood for somebody else entirely,  an attempt for a portable chest xray for the pneumonia that somebody else had, no checking for peripheral pulses after knee surgery. Not that anybody had listened to my chest or anything, but still. And that's not even getting to the tech stuff of looking at my (own) labs and getting them fixed, or checking that that antibiotic I almost got hung was indeed something I am allergic to, as it clearly states on my chart and armband. And this was a relatively simple thing, not a major multitrauma.

Thinking back to the new students who thought nursing was going to be easy, all just "following doctor's orders" (gag me), were in for a rude surprise, but it wasn't one that the faculty sprung on them out of malice or sadism or some throwback to when they were students. It's to try to get them to recognize that being competent professionals demands-- yes, demands-- a high standard of learning and knowledge integration.

That means, yes, passing a minimum standard and no fudging. If you get passed along with your 72%, then what does the person who got 70% say? 3/4 > 7/10, right? What's an acceptable fail for somebody who has to move on to the next semester has to learn new material and know all that material AND apply it at a higher level? This is, in fact, why people fail. 

I hear you on wanting school to be easier because it means so much to you. Well, I thought about being an astronaut or a whiteriver rafting guide, but those weren't gonna happen either. I couldn't do what I would have had to do to make those goals. If you truly can't do what you need to do to pass a college of nursing major, then transfer to something you can pass.

However. If you won't do what you have to do to pass, then that's on you, not your faculty. Advocate for yourself. Persist. Get the help you need. Get a tutor for med math or pharm or physiology or whatever your particular challenges are, early in the semester, before you get behind, certainly not three days (or less) before the midterm or the final.

And while you plan the optimal nursing curriculum in your spare time, see how well your plan will work out to prepare those competent nurses we all want. If it's easier for everybody and it works. I'm sure we'd all be thrilled to hear it.

[FiremedicMike, BSN, RN, EMT-P]

Hannahbanana said:

It's because nursing and medical care are a whole lot more complicated than they were fifteen or thirty years ago, by far. Even then, we admitted about 25% more students than we had slots for, because we knew that within three weeks our offices would be full of weeping students who always wanted to be nurses like their moms/granmas/aunties/Cherry Ames/the Army nurses in the commercials but didn't realize it was going to be like this, with naked old people, bowel movements, and hard science-- a lot of hard science.

Nursing faculty by and large WANT to see their students succeed, want their programs to turn out nurses who will be safe practitioners s newbies and therefore have the knowledge they need to pass NCLEX. That's why we took pay cuts and then worked ridiculous hours doing lesson prep and correcting care plans and everything else that we do. It's ludicrous to suggest otherwise. I will grant you that not all faculty are the best teachers, but if you want to be fair about that, remember back to your four years of high school and see how many of all those teachers were really excellent. Ask your parents or friends or siblings if all their college faculty were terrific. I think you'll find your situation wasn't so special after all.

Also, I'd be rich if I had a dollar for every student who failed "by just three points!"-- that being that if passing were 75%, they got a 72%, meaning they couldn't correctly answer three out of four questions on an exam, an exam that most of the class DID pass, many with 80s or 90s. Double the money if any of them spent one minute in my or any other faculty office asking for clarifications on things they were confused about, extra help, critiques on their homework, pre-exam review sessions, or post-exam reviews. All of which their better-performing classmates did do. Funny thing about that.

The "next generation of compassionate and competent nurses" is what we all want. Sweet lord, I just had an admission of my own and realized that while I used to josh with my students that the reason I taught nursing was to prepare for the day when I would have competent care when I was old, well, that day arrived .... but the competent part sorta didn't catch that bus. We're talking no offers of oral care after vomiting post anesthesia, no checking back in an hour to see if analgesia had helped, no offer of even a washcloth for pits and hair, no food, lab techs sent to me to draw blood for somebody else entirely,  an attempt for a portable chest xray for the pneumonia that somebody else had, no checking for peripheral pulses after knee surgery. Not that anybody had listened to my chest or anything, but still. And that's not even getting to the tech stuff of looking at my (own) labs and getting them fixed, or checking that that antibiotic I almost got hung was indeed something I am allergic to, as it clearly states on my chart and armband. And this was a relatively simple thing, not a major multitrauma.

Thinking back to the new students who thought nursing was going to be easy, all just "following doctor's orders" (gag me), were in for a rude surprise, but it wasn't one that the faculty sprung on them out of malice or sadism or some throwback to when they were students. It's to try to get them to recognize that being competent professionals demands-- yes, demands-- a high standard of learning and knowledge integration.

That means, yes, passing a minimum standard and no fudging. If you get passed along with your 72%, then what does the person who got 70% say? 3/4 > 7/10, right? What's an acceptable fail for somebody who has to move on to the next semester has to learn new material and know all that material AND apply it at a higher level? This is, in fact, why people fail. 

I hear you on wanting school to be easier because it means so much to you. Well, I thought about being an astronaut or a whiteriver rafting guide, but those weren't gonna happen either. I couldn't do what I would have had to do to make those goals. If you truly can't do what you need to do to pass a college of nursing major, then transfer to something you can pass.

However. If you won't do what you have to do to pass, then that's on you, not your faculty. Advocate for yourself. Persist. Get the help you need. Get a tutor for med math or pharm or physiology or whatever your particular challenges are, early in the semester, before you get behind, certainly not three days (or less) before the midterm or the final.

And while you plan the optimal nursing curriculum in your spare time, see how well your plan will work out to prepare those competent nurses we all want. If it's easier for everybody and it works. I'm sure we'd all be thrilled to hear it.

With all due respect (and I truly, honestly mean that), I am not a 19 year old fresh behind the ears college student, I am an experienced practitioner, an experienced student, and an experienced educator.  I have developed curriculum.  I have developed test questions and evaluation methods.  When the time comes, if I decide to move into nursing education, I will happily work to rewrite curriculum and update teaching methodology, but in the mean time, that's what I pay you guys to do.

[Adam D., ASN, RN]

Failed out of an LPN program after failing pharmacology by less than 2 points...Drove up to an info session for a program two states away three days later, and  eventually got accepted for the following Spring. I'm currently one semester away from getting my ADN and it couldn't have worked out better. If you want it bad enough you'll make it happen. Don't let failing out discourage you.

[Hannahbanana, BSN, MSN]

On 5/12/2021 at 3:04 PM, FiremedicMike said:

With all due respect (and I truly, honestly mean that), I am not a 19 year old fresh behind the ears college student, I am an experienced practitioner, an experienced student, and an experienced educator.  I have developed curriculum.  I have developed test questions and evaluation methods.  When the time comes, if I decide to move into nursing education, I will happily work to rewrite curriculum and update teaching methodology, but in the mean time, that's what I pay you guys to do.

Sometimes posts are not targeted to one person, in this case, yourself. There are many, many, MANY students and wannabe students who needed to hear that. I hope they will.
Meanwhile, trust me, your tuition isn’t paying your faculty. There isn’t one reputable school of nursing at any level whose faculty salaries are covered by tuition alone, much less the expense of an entire curriculum. 

[FiremedicMike, BSN, RN, EMT-P]

13 hours ago, Hannahbanana said:

Sometimes posts are not targeted to one person, in this case, yourself. There are many, many, MANY students and wannabe students who needed to hear that. I hope they will.
Meanwhile, trust me, your tuition isn’t paying your faculty. There isn’t one reputable school of nursing at any level whose faculty salaries are covered by tuition alone, much less the expense of an entire curriculum. 

This is semantics and you know it.  I pay tuition.  I am paying for a product, the product is supposed to be effective education, which is created, maintained, and updated by the professors who run the program.  The professors who run the program are employed by the school where I pay tuition.

A=B, B=C, A=C.. I’m paying for my professors to create good content.