Hmmmmm Why Do Nursing Students Fail?

anonymousstudent · Apr 9, 2011

They fail because they don't GET it. You can't study this stuff at face value, you can't cram. You can't expect to read all of the material and fly right through. You have to understand and apply it. You have to know how one finding interacts with another. How one medication may help one system but cause problems in another. You have to look at a problem as a part of a complex system and manage all of the consequences.

Good luck! It's not horribly hard IMO but you have to really know what you're doing and why.

That Guy, BSN, RN, EMT-B · Apr 9, 2011

I failed because I didnt put the effort forward that I needed to. It was in L&D and I hated it so I thought I would be able to put as minimal effort forward as possible and pass. I also thought the teacher hated me and had it out for me. What it really was, was my attitude toward everything and once I readjusted, I passed easily. Passed NCLEX, got a job.

TheCareerStudent · Apr 9, 2011

Nursing school is tough and different from any of my previous schooling. I have done very well but I have seen a lot of my classmates not cut it. Some of them put in effort and some didn't. The ones that put in effort just could not grasp it. It may have been their technique or one of a million other things. A lot of the people who did not put in the effort seemed to think college was a joke and they were just there to get a date. They were more worried about socializing then applying themselves. Don't get me wrong I have made some great friends but I am all business at school, I am there to be a nurse.

That's my two cents.

Nepenthe Sea · Apr 9, 2011

In my school, the testing really gets people. Some people just never get used to the testing style, and get test anxiety so bad that they can't pass, even though they know the information. Some people are not good with time management, and try to cram or don't get all their stuff done. I don't think most of the material in nursing school is hard, but they give you so much busy work, in addition to the studying you have to do. And some people just do not put forth the effort. Last semester we had a student that was not passing pedi. I know of at least two people that offered to tutor her, and tried repeatedly to meet with her to work on it, but she blew them off every time. It wasn't a huge surprise when she didn't pass. Also, in my program, the instructors will drop questions from the exam if a majority of the class misses them. This can raise your grade by as much as 10 points, depending on how many they throw out. Well, a lot of people were putting too much faith into getting those extra points, and then once we hit our last year, most of the instructors started dropping a lot less questions. These are all things in my program that contribute. I don't know how it is at other schools.

That being said, I have heard students say that they think certain instructors go out of their way to fail students. After being in this program for the last 2 1/2 years, I can say I have met ONE who I believe really did try to set people up for failure. I think she's definitely in the minority, though.

llg, PhD, RN · Apr 9, 2011

There have been some really good responses so far ... but I'll add this.

Some people fail because they are stubborn and not willing to change the way do things. They want to do things "their way" and don't accept the fact that success as a nurse requires that they learn to think and act like a nurse -- and that may be different from the way they think and act now.

If you read the posts of people who have failed or who are struggling with nursing school, you'll notice that some of them say essentially, "I am perfect the way I am ... I am doing everything right ... but those mean teachers are giving me bad grades anyway." (The post by That Guy above reflects a wonderful, but rare acceptance of responsibility.)

If you find yourself struggling with a course, seek help and be willing to change the way you are approaching the material. Don't cling stubbornly to the methods and attitudes that aren't working for you. Be open to new ways of thinking and acting -- and actually take the advice of people who are successful.

Learning = change .... And if you aren't willing to change, you can't learn.

Streamline2010 · Apr 9, 2011

What everyone else said, plus, Nurses always are working under restrictions and handicaps:

1. Restrictions in the med system's hierarchy, where nurses don't treat disease, they don't heal people, they facilitate healing. DOCTORS fix problems and DOCTORS diagnose. Don't ever forget that as nurse you are playing second fiddle and helpmate to DOCTORS. If you are a career changer from an occupation where the upper echelon does not lord it over underlings, and everyone is a valued member of a work team, with a valuable part of the job to do, forget nursing. Nurses are still underlings at a hospital. Student nurses are the very bottom of the pile, and doodoo rolls downhill, as the saying goes. If you want to heal people and have autonomy, become a MD, DO, or physician's assistant and leave nursing to those who will take abuse.

Because nursing doesn't cross the line to MD or DO, it has a the NANDA nursing diagnoses quagmire to navigate. Now, I have no problem taking a medical diagnosis, and seeing what problems that medical condition is causing the patient, and then figuring out what I can do and am legally permitted to to as a RN. But a lot of students don't find that so easy. In a way, the NANDA system is like learning a foreign language. And you write all care plans around NANDA nursing diagnoses, and the various nuances of those. So, the student has to learn all of that um, stuff, too. Truthfully, if I had known about the NANDA system and the back-of-the-bus status nursing diagnoses, and the inherent second-class status of nurses, I'd have not gone into nursing school. I thought that since private industry had managed to create work teams that respected everyone, the medical system had, too.

2. Metering of the supply of new grads. It appears to me that there is more of an emphasis on keeping a shortage of nurses in order to keep pay rates high, that nursing instruction HAS to be made hard. Gee, if the instructors really did a 180-degree turn and decided to condense, make orderly, make available, make easy, by actually switching the emphasis to nurturing and drilling and rote memorization and repetition/reinforcement, and setting a goal of imparting all of the course material in the most pleasant, painless, and efficient way possible, and having all the students succeed, well, then, it just would not be a medical curriculum, would it? It would start to look like business degrees, or engineering, or something, where the emphasis is on having an open system that shares information.

3. Unintentional bottlenecks and restrictions, like poor instruction: Just as every teacher in a classroom is not a really great teacher, 50% of nurses graduated in the bottom half of their class, and some of them are in teaching. I'm an adult student with college degrees and lots of technical prowess, and an IQ over 130, and it's not too difficult to see that nursing does not attract a large percentage of those people, that the curriculum might be poorly designed. The teaching plan may not be laid out well, and students may be left to do, and even told to do, a lot of self-teaching or go-ask-you-classmates. i.e., the instructor can't design the course, can't teach the course like a well-trained veteran, and may not be able to answer the questions that students are asking. I've already encountered several instances where the clinical training got far ahead of the classroom training, or the "how to write nurses notes training," or whatever. Meanwhile, I have been getting my GPA docked points for deficiencies in clinical behavior, or deficiencies in my written reports, and then at the end of the semester, we suddenly get a whole lecture or two on the how to do these things. Dipsheet instructors. Never organized, themselves. But they demand that all the students be.

4. Metering of actual class size, by the schools. Don't forget that in the USA postsecondary ed is in the biz of selling ed. Just as the airlines overbook on the assumption that they will get a certain % of cancellations and no-shows, nursing schools do, too. They will take in a larger number of students than they will graduate. If they don't have adequate facilities and number of instructors to process all of those students in the upper division courses, then certainly a certain number of underclassmen must either voluntarily leave or be flunked out of the program before then. Meanwhile, the school collects tuition money and financial aid grant money from them.

5. Nurses have to be everything to everybody, all the time, and are supposed to please the whole world. There are huge changes in hospitals due to the switch to healthcare is a business. Once you start clinicals, you'll find that there are rules for all kinds of things that you never even could imagine, and that you not only do patient care, but you do it within all of the constraints and restraints of the legal requirements, and the cost-cutting requirements, and the hospital's please-the-customer-scheme-du-jour. There is a heavy burden of overhead placed on nurses, and you will be expected to juggle that and also get your patient care done.

I am still deciding whether I want to continue with nursing school or just quit. I'd say that if you are more of a task-oriented person, then go into something like diagnostic medical sonographer or biomed equipment repair or perhaps surgical tech. In nursing, you'll always have somebody watching you, criticizing you, making unreasonable demands for services (like pamper the new mommy, or go get my husband a nice pitcher of ice water NOW, or get in here ASAP when I push the call button for my 2000th trivial need today), and the hospitals are so bent on kissing patient's orifices that they don't ever set limits on what's appropriate scope of catering to provide along with the actual medical care. Put a patient in his or her place, and it's a black mark for the nurse. The nurse is still supposed to be everyone's cheerful servant and helpmate, always altruistic, always selfless, always without bias, always with a smile and the ultimate in politeness and respect.

Pretty tall order, so I don't feel the LEAST bit inadequate if I fail out. I am starting to think it would be insane to continue.

Always_Learning, BSN, RN · Apr 9, 2011

As llg mentioned above, be willing to seek help, and seek it early. I have been approached by several students near the end of a semester who were requesting help studying and were in a near panic/frenzy mode. By that time, a large hole has been dug, and it's hard to get out of it (said students didn't pass). Nursing knowledge builds upon itself, and if you don't understand something being taught today, chances are you will still be lost (or be even more lost) a month from now.

On the other hand, I had another classmate quietly ask me early on for some study tips after she didn't do as well as she'd like on a quiz. I tossed a few ideas her way, but most importantly, she also worked with instructors and asked what she could change...she will be graduating with us. Be willing to change and ask for help! Any instructor worth his/her salt recognizes a student asking for help as one who wants to succeed.

Best wishes! :)

mangopeach · Apr 9, 2011

I'm in my first semester of nursing school. I'm sure it will get harder, but most people in my class do well on the written exams. Its the skills checkoffs that became a problem for the people that have failed out so far.

PacoUSA, BSN, RN · Apr 9, 2011

They fail because they lose focus. The answer is not any simpler than that.

AOx1 · Apr 10, 2011

Of the students I teach, there are four main causes.

1. Financial/burning candle at both ends. Some can't afford school, and try to work full time, take care of family, and go to school full time.

2. Health problems/family emergency

3. Lack of preparation/motivation

4. Very rarely- not smart enough. I've only seen this once or twice.

yel550i · Apr 10, 2011

THANK YOU ALL for replying so quickly!!(i love this site)

I agree with all of you But AOX1 I really loved your post being that it's good to know that students dont particularly fail out for not being smart enough!! Sounds like All I have to do to be successful is stay motivated,Stay on top of things..And oh yea STUDY,STUDY,STUDY!! And I'll be just fine! I cant wait to one day be in all of you all's shoes one day!