Help. Is my outrage justified?

[fairandbalanced]

Is my rage justified. My friend just flunked out of her first semester at Charity with a 76 average. 77 is the cut. The failing question (and I don't know it word for word, but here is the general gist of it): An african woman who lives in Africa has an intestinal bug. She believes that by eating pumpkin seeds, the bug will be eliminated. Is this a : religious belief, a cultural belief, is she correct, and few other choices. My friend answered, a cultural belief. As per the teacher: WRONG. First of all, regardless of the question or answer, how is this question even relevant to Nursing? Upon doing her homework and research, she could prove it very much IS a cultural thing. She appealed the question. The woman who wrote the question refused to budge and the committee sided with her. So boom. My freind is out. Never mind she is an excellent student. I am outraged. 44 people apparently missed that stupid, trick, unfair, irrelevant question. When teachers result to trickery on exams, it is so unfair and the students will never win. What can be done about this? This is a power issue and the teacher is getting off on it. People like that have got to go. I am beginning Charity in January. If I wasn't sufficiently terrified before, I certainly am now. Feedback, please.

[Emergency RN]

actually, fiona, i have had two encounters with this particular instructor. neither of which were pleasant.

no offense, fairandbalanced, but first off, it really was none of your business.

next, your degree of seething over something that had nothing to do with you is puzzling. you had answered that you 'care' about all this because you're about to enter into the same program. but instead of taking a valuable lesson from your 'friend's' marginality, you choose instead to defend her inferior academic performance against that of an established educational authority; ie. a member of the faculty. others here have already pointed out that one anomalous question does not fail a capable student; if your friend didn't trip over the other 22% in the first place, the loss of the one question wouldn't have resulted in her expulsion. the substance of the question being inane or not would have been immaterial.

additionally, your degree of prejudgment after hearing only one side of the story is worrisome. as clinicians, nurses have to listen to many sides of a story before we can arrive at a central 'truth' if there is one to be found. my advice is, one always needs to leave room to admit being wrong. but from what i see thus far, you're far more devoted to defending your point of view than listening to your seniors and benefiting from their valuable collective experience. imho, such are the traits of students that are the hardest to teach; yet the easiest to fail.

consider this your first lesson in pre-nursing. whether you choose to pass or not, depends entirely on you.

oh, and btw, i find it really troubling that you choose to characterize your friend as an 'excellent student' when i see (from your description) an 'academically challenged student that is one question from failure'

[dthfytr, ADN, LPN, RN, EMT-B, EMT-I]

It's terrible frustrating to miss a goal by such a small margin, and painful to see a friend do so. You are a good friend. Unfortunately there has to be a line drawn somewhere.

If so many people missed the same question, is it a matter of a bad question or poor teaching? Students sit in classes to learn, not because they already know the material. If a large percentage of students miss the same question, I would wonder if the fault were in the question or in the teaching.

[CanuckLPN73]

Oh, and BTW, I find it really troubling that you choose to characterize your friend as an 'excellent student' when I see (from your description) an 'academically challenged student that is one question from failure'

This post shocks me as many academically challenged students are excellent students. Maybe they dont have 90s however they do great in clinical! Everyone has an area where they shine, and some excellent students dont shine in class and struggle throughout the program until they hit the floor.

Excellent students do fail, excellent nurses fail, and there are those who have never failed and make lousy students and nurses.

Failing isnt the end of the world, its part of life and is part of ones learning process.

[sevensonnets]

Nowhere in your post do you say that your friend is outraged. Just out of curiosity, why are you so outraged on your friend's behalf that you call the instructor a mean and unhappy woman who's just on a power trip?

[nerdtonurse?, BSN, RN]

In a word, no.

When you go to nursing school, on your first day, look around the class. Probably 30% of the people around you will not make it to graduation. People may bomb out by 1 point; they may bomb out by 20 points, but it is the rare individual who says, "you know, I didn't study hard enough, take this seriously enough, it's my fault" -- rather, you get the "it's everyone else's fault but mine" and the "I only missed by one......". If they moved it one point lower, then the people who were 2 points from passing would be complaining. They move it again, the people 3 points away would complain that they had "almost" passed. You don't "almost" pass -- you pass or you don't. When you get to the boards, NCLEX isn't going to care what a person's complaints are; you're going to pass or not. And they aren't going to care if you liked your teacher, or if she was good or not -- the BON for your state is going to look at one thing, the pass rate. What's the pass rate for your school? That's the measure of the instruction. If your teachers are the sweetest, most leinient people in the world, and no one passes the boards, they've just cheated you out of 2 years of your life, and you've let them.

The people I've seen bomb out fall into 3 categories: the people who didn't take it seriously when someone said, "do NOT be late to clinicals" or "you MUST make a passing grade" or "you MUST complete your clinical paperwork correctly and on time." They try to slide into clinicals late, don't bring what they need, or consistently "just" miss a passing grade on the tests. Then when they are told they are failing, the wailing and blaming starts. Most of the people I've seen fail fall into that category. The 2nd category are the people who are getting into nursing for all the wrong reasons: Mom was one, they want to be a travel nurse so they can see the world, they want to be a CRNA so they can hang out with docs, they want to make all that money. They have unrealistic expectations, and then turn bitter when they realize most docs don't look like "McDreamy" and RN's clean up pee, poop and vomit just like the LPNS and CNAs do. The third group are the saddest -- the people who have always wanted to be a nurse, work at it with every thing they have, but just aren't capable of performing the work. Maybe they just can't get drug dosage, or science isn't their strong suit, and they can't get chemistry or A&P. The desire, the dedication are there, but for whatever reason, the brainpower isn't. Those are the ones that break my heart.

Bottom line. There is only one person responsible for whether or not you pass your classes or your boards -- YOU.

[Quark09]

This probably differs from program to program, but our instructors had to choose questions from a test bank (they didn't write the questions themselves). They were all generally NCLEX-style, and included some of the alternate format Q's. If more than half of the class missed a particular question, they would revisit it and decide if it would be thrown out. One instructor would not ever change test scores, but she would take the question out of the test bank so that it wouldn't be on future exams for later classes. Only two of the instructors would actually give the point if more than half missed and also chose the same (incorrect) answer.

To some, that may not seem fair; to those of us who kept a comfortable margin when it came to points, it was less of a big deal.

[CanuckLPN73]

we are being taught the literature is talking about moving from culturally sensitive to culturally competent

I looked up the difference

http://www.enotes.com/nursing-encyclopedia/cultural-sensitivity

I think it depends on the program.

For example we learned abunch of nrsg abbreviations which now we do not need to know as some are saying they want to get rid of abbreviations and write the entire word out. My thoughts...Im glad we do not need to know them now as I personally would rather write out the entire word...short of breath rather than pt is sob, right instead of rt.

In our program we have a very intense anatomy and physiology program whereas in other colleges they dont. I was talking to a friend from another college and mentioned muscles and insertions as in the deltoid muscle insertion is deltoid tuberosity...she thought I meant injections as they did not take any of what I just took!! LOL (she is in her 4th semester and I am going into my 2nd)

[Emergency RN]

This post shocks me as many academically challenged students are excellent students. Maybe they dont have 90s however they do great in clinical! Everyone has an area where they shine, and some excellent students dont shine in class and struggle throughout the program until they hit the floor.

Excellent students do fail, excellent nurses fail, and there are those who have never failed and make lousy students and nurses.

Failing isnt the end of the world, its part of life and is part of ones learning process.

"...many academically challenged students are excellent students" ?

Excuse me, but that's sorta like Jumbo Shrimp, right? LOL...

What I mean to say is, if they're excellent students in the first place, then they would NOT be academically challenged, would they?. Rather, I think what you meant to say is that even poor students may make great nurses, and I agree with you on that. But, I'm afraid you're appending your own thoughts to my words; I didn't say anything at all about her friend eventually being a good or bad nurse, just that she was academically challenged based on the OP's description of her grades. Thus, I stand by my observation of her being one question from failure as well as her being academically challenged.

That is, anyone who is a C student is academically challenged (or poor student); as opposed to being academically average (B or fair student) or academically superior (A or excellent student). Since in the OP's discussion, the friend's academic life's continued existence was entirely dependent on the success or failure of answering one question; again, my assessment of her being one question from failure is also factually correct.

[neuroms]

I've just finished my first semester and have found that nursing tests tend to be half knowledge and half knowing the professor's questions/lucky guessing. And it isn't just your program, you can't challenge those fluff questions in any nursing program, but that's life. There are times when you're at a definite power disadvantage and it doesn't matter how right you are; you have to be prepared to let it roll off.

[Ayvah, RN]

Agreed nerd2nurse! Only 30% of my class graduated. Students have to plan that there will be questions worded odd or which they won't agree with the teacher on. No test can be taken for granted and even 'easy' topics must be strenuously studied to give as many buffer points as possible for this purpose.

[CanuckLPN73]

"...many academically challenged students are excellent students" ?

Excuse me, but that's sorta like Jumbo Shrimp, right? LOL...

What I mean to say is, if they're excellent students in the first place, then they would NOT be academically challenged, would they?. Rather, I think what you meant to say is that even poor students may make great nurses, and I agree with you on that. But, I'm afraid you're appending your own thoughts to my words; I didn't say anything at all about her friend eventually being a good or bad nurse, just that she was academically challenged based on the OP's description of her grades. Thus, I stand by my observation of her being one question from failure as well as her being academically challenged.

That is, anyone who is a C student is academically challenged (or poor student); as opposed to being academically average (B or fair student) or academically superior (A or excellent student). Since in the OP's discussion, the friend's academic life's continued existence was entirely dependent on the success or failure of answering one question; again, my assessment of her being one question from failure is also factually correct.

I disagree...

I happen to be a C student, academically challenged and I have been told by my instructors that I am a good student...just some area's I struggle with.

I have an A average in certain courses and a C in others...not because Im a poor student but because I am academically challenged.

I have even failed a few courses, only to take them again and pass...because to fail a course is not a poor student but one who is learning. To give up and quit because one failed an exam or didnt get a grade that they expected...that is a poor student....a good student learns and doesnt give up!! I know people who took double the length of time to graduate because they were average academically challenged.

Even our instructor said that she finds many of the ones with the lower grades and marginal grades are the ones who shine during clinical...they just dont do as well on the exams...

[carolmaccas66, BSN, RN]

I don't understand why she failed her 1st semester answering one question incorrectly?

Anyway I remember we all had an ambiguous question once re evolution and Darwin's theory as to whether it was right or not (something like that, it was a looong time ago!) Well many people in my class who were religious didn't answer it or said they couldn't because they only believe in divine creation of the earth etc. Many people failed and the whole class went to the head of the school and dean of the university, and the question was eliminated from future exam papers and we all got extra points (therefore many people passed).

Maybe u could try something like this?

It suxs when someone fails but your friend has to want to do something about it, though it is great ur helping out. I'd go somewhere else. And yes, I've failed in the past and had to re-do a unit. It's a fact of life unfortunately with study.