So I'm the husband of a hard-working nursing student who's been at it for the last 18 months at UNLV. All along my wife has done well and passed all of her classes. As a medical graduate myself I know that it can take long hours of studying and working to get by and I've been truly amazed and proud of how hard my wife has worked to get through her degree program.
So why am I here? Because I'm truly angry and frustrated by what has just happened and my wife is too upset even to talk to her family, let alone get on here and vent. Two days prior to her planned graduation, with family all arriving and plans all set, she was told that she has failed one of her courses, by the typical
What truly amazes me is that about 20% of her classmates had this happen. All of these students passed every class up to this point, and then two days prior to graduation they flunked out. This seems like cruel and unusual punishment.... You make people work their tails off for months and then fail them just days prior to graduation! Many of them have children counting on them for support (ie. single mothers) or were in financial hardship just to reach that point, or had long term relationships fall apart due to the hardship of nursing school. All that to fail 2 days prior to graduation. I just cannot believe the lack of compassion of the faculty. Surely it must be possible to "weed-out" those who shouldn't become nurses long before graduation rather than two days prior.... In my schooling it seemed to me that most of the failing occurred within the first few semesters rather than at the end. I suppose the nursing school wouldn't make the same kind of money on tuition that way however...
So what I am wondering is whether or not this is commonplace? Is this something unique to UNLV? Is this something that other people have experienced at this school or elsewhere? Does anyone think this is fair?
My BSN was through an accelerated option program, and though we lost people, most of them were dropped during the first few months of the program.
Of the 80 odd who started the class, less than 10% didn't finish. We had some pass-or-else exams (med calc, head-to-toe assessment, etc), but on those there was an opportunity for a re-take. With regular classes, one had to have a minimum 75% aggregate on the tests, and a "C" overall for the class. There was also a limit on the number of C grades one could have.
The thing about nursing school is that one bad day can actually put you out, if it's bad enough. There is some sense in that since a bad day in nursing practice can severely harm or kill a Pt.
I just finished a 2nd attempt at my last semester of my program. Last semester, my dad had a heart attack 8 days before the 2nd of 4 exams in my med-surg class. I failed the exam upon returning to school following his heart attack. I wasn't allowed any other options than to take the exam with my class.
10 days before the 3rd exam of 4, dad had a stroke, and I again made the 10 hour drive back home to help care for him, and missed 8 days of school. Of course, I failed the 3rd exam, as well.
I couldn't recover from those failures, and ended up failing the class with a 74.7, needed a 75 to pass. I found out 7 days before our pinning ceremony that I would not be graduating.
I was 1 of 22 students who failed last semester, the majority of those failures being with a 74 average. 23 out of roughly 100. Another 20-30 are now out of the program due to being unsuccessful at passing the HESI exit exam. Weeded out.
As I said, I just finished a retake. I've passed the class and the exit exam, and am about to do my final preceptorship. Of the 60 people in this new class, 20 failed the class outright, and I know of 18 who failed the first shot at the HESI. They get 2 more chances to pass it.
I'll be graduating this time. But I realize fully how closely I came to being weeded out, despite the fact that I was a 4.0 GPA student throughout school, and regardless of the reason for missing class/failing exams.
My program started with about ~60 students and when we finished, about 20 of the original students were left. It IS cruel to tell someone they failed right before graduation. The truth of the matter is, a nursing school has to graduate a certain number (which depends) of students. Nursing instructors have the leeway and power to throw out/keep questions on exams to either increase, keep the same, or decrease scores.
I can't imagine what it must feel like to know that you missed graduation by less than a single digit percetage point. Yikes!
Unfortunately, though, a grade does not reflect how badly she wanted this. We'd all have As if that were the case!
By the time the last semester comes around, it is as much a personality thing (in the clinical portion) as it is true lack of ability or actual poor performance. Poor performers and those that are lacking in abililites have been weeded out for the most part, as they should have been. Those who "choke" at the end are few and far between. Our program had instructors who openly prided themselves on "getting rid" of students at the end. It makes sense that there would be more satisfaction in this. I certainly hope that your wife can come out of this successfully.
If the same rules apply to each student in the program then it is FAIR.
It is horrible; it is unreasonable; it is a stain on the program and on the instructor; it is downright rotten -- but it is fair.
Good point!
I still think it's illogical to think that a student who passes a class with a 75.1% is somehow smarter than the student who fails the same class with 74.9%.
I also think that schools with high attrition rates due to academic failure should set up policies to address such failures. Perhaps these schools need to be more selective in their admission standards. It seems to me to be a tremendous waste of resources on the parts of the schools if students take several years of pre-requisites, get waitlisted, finally get in and then fail out of the nursing program.
Perhaps schools should look more toward individual learning styles and cohort students with particular learning needs. I can think of one school that had a high percentage of students who spoke English as a second language. There was a nurse educator on the faculty who had a degree in teaching ESL students, but, instead of using that faculty member as a resource or having her concentrate on cohorts of ESL students, they had her doing work with students who had no language barrier issues.
I also don't think issues of student attrition vs. progression should be left to a committee composed of part-time faculty members who only meet once every month or so. Committees aren't always consistent and there's a line between looking at each case individually and being unfair. Just my
Maybe I am too idealistic but I think there is a way to educate future nurses without hazing them or creating even more stress in programs that are academically intense and inherently stressful. I also think it's possible to hold students to high standards in academics and clinical practice while being mindful that life happens, even during nursing school.
Frankly, I would have gone to bat for the student whose father had a heart attack during the last semester and tried, within the best of my abilities, to have made other arrangements for him to take his exams. However, as I stated in a previous post, I was played by a student my first year of full-time teaching. When I get my next teaching job, I will make sure to have faculty back-up and do PLENTY of documentation the next time a student's life seems to interfere with school so that no one takes advantage of me again.
I totally feel your frustration. I was a nursing student until very recently. I failed one class last semester and the program I am in requires an 80% passing score. I ended up with a 79.75% in the class. The re-admission policy clearly states that a student can re-take a course; the only criteria in space availability. There were numerous slots vacated by the class behind me, therefore, the space is there. I was given all sorts of excuses and down right lies for which I would not be allowed to re-take this course, therefore, putting me in a holding pattern with my education. they told me that they might let me back in for the fall semester. I couldn't believe my ears when they pulled this on me. I have invested two years in this endeavor to be a nurse, between the pre-requisite courses and a year in the program itself. Rather than administering the due process that is outlined in the student handbook,the faculity is making up rules as they go along. From the way they have been behaving, I can only gather that they are picking and choosing who gets to complete their education based on their own personal biases, in other words, who they think will make good nurses and who they don't think will make good nurses. Obviously this assessment is being contrived by their personal judgements, not on the re-admission policies that are stated in the program handbook. Even in med school, you don't get kicked out for failing one class. I actually had the dean of the nursing program tell me that the policies stated in the handbood were only guidelines. When I then asked her, "if those rules stated in the handbook are not rules to be adhered to, then how and on what criteria were they deciding who gets to fill open slots when a class has to be repeated?"...her answer was that there was no criteria. I then asked, how then do you decide? She then told me that I should adjust my attitude. Apparently they do not like it when students try to protect their own futures. I am a single mother and I have busted my you know what to come this far. They just threw me out like I was garbage. I am now understanding why there is a nursing shortage. These women who run these programs are way out of line. I am a woman, and I can say that part of the problem is that these are women who get together and become polarized and druck with power. They doing whatever they want regardless of the rules that give students rights. They have no regard for the time and money that a student has invested. They know that in order to go in another direction, all the time spent so far toward nursing is a waste. Who's got that luxury when they are trying to pay bills and raise their children? We have a president urging people to go back to school; you do so and this is how you get treated. I never questioned their grading policy, I took full responsibility for my failure. The fact that they are impeding my ability to redeem myself over a quarter of a percentage point when they have an 80% percent criteria in the first place, is disgusting. It is ridiculous that these so called administrators are given this kind of power because they are ruining people's lives. It is a power trip and I would have never involved myself in a selective admissions program such as this one had I known the culture they breed. It's really funny because the only reason their is such competitiion and lack of space in the first place is the fact that academia does not want to pay for good instructors. The instructors and faculty they do acquire decides to create this eliteist ideology within the program, and then furthermore, take it upon their elite underpaid selves to ruin other people's lives who have invested themselves to achieve a degree, in what is furthermore, a job that this country sorely needs people to fulfill. What a crock of inappropriate crap these schools have created.
rngolfer53
681 Posts
My BSN was through an accelerated option program, and though we lost people, most of them were dropped during the first few months of the program.
Of the 80 odd who started the class, less than 10% didn't finish. We had some pass-or-else exams (med calc, head-to-toe assessment, etc), but on those there was an opportunity for a re-take. With regular classes, one had to have a minimum 75% aggregate on the tests, and a "C" overall for the class. There was also a limit on the number of C grades one could have.
The thing about nursing school is that one bad day can actually put you out, if it's bad enough. There is some sense in that since a bad day in nursing practice can severely harm or kill a Pt.