I Wish I Could Get Away with It...

[flashpoint]

One of our patients is a nursing student. She is feeling much better and is really only there for IV antibiotics because all of her other issues have resolved. She has apparently missed quite a bit of school because she had to take an online test yesterday and her instructor wouldn't give her more time even though she was in the hospital. I felt sort of bad for her because of that, but there was nothing I could do.

Well...the feeling bad for her feeling went away pretty quickly. We were told to stay out of the room until she opened the door and let us know she was done with her test. Her call light went off, so I went in to answer it, despite the door still being closed. Her sister, who is an RN was using the patient's laptop and as I walked by, I noticed that to top of the screen had the college's logo on it and it was opened to the college's testing site. (I took classes there too, so I am familiar with the site). The patient had a textbook in front of her and was saying something about, "The book says it usually takes about three hours." The patient threw a pen across the room and yelled at me to get out when I walked over to turn the call light off...she had just bumped it.

So...apparently, the sister was taking the test while the patient looked up answers in the book. I've taken a lot of online classes and most of the time, using the book is not a problem, but the sister actually taking the test bothers me.

I know there is nothing I can do about it and it really has no effect on me, but it really irks me that she is apparently cheating. The hospital I work at gave this person a scholarship to help pay for school, so she might end up working there someday. A part of me would really like to report her, but I know there is no way I can...and it doesn't seem like it would serve any purpose anyway.

Thanks for listening!

[al586]

It will catch up with her eventually.

Hopefully, she won't kill anyone while it catches up to her.:uhoh21:

[gettingbsn2msn, MSN, RN]

Bigger fish to fry. Forget about it. Karma is worse than anything you could do.

[kanzi monkey]

How would you report her without revealing that she was a patient in a hospital? Without details, even an anonymous report would not hold much weight. And obviously, if you GAVE details, that's a violation of...what now?

Like I said before, to you she is your patient first, before she is a "cheating student". All of your patients should be seen this way. Sometimes it is very difficult to keep that in perspective (like when your patient is a criminal, a child molester, a racist) and THOSE are the moments where we struggle with ethical issues in how we care for our patients or how we deal with knowing what they've done. Not when some annoying girl is cheating on a test.

What she is doing may be lame, but it is not illegal. Leave her alone. For those who say that we shouldn't let her get away with it or let "karma" do its thing, it's not about karma, or what she's doing, or how cheating on tests is going to work out for her. It's just not the nurse's place to get involved.

[Not_A_Hat_Person, RN]

I'm very surprised she was allowed to take an online exam remotely. I did nursing school at a community college, with quite a few online courses. A computer lab was set up specifically for on-line courses, with a monitored testing room. All exams had to be taken in the testing room, and students had to show ID to take an exam. If the exam was on a computer, a staff member walked you to a computer and logged you in.

[DeLana_RN, BSN, RN]

I realize I'm a dinosaur, having gone to college in the 90's, long before online classes and tests. But it seems to me that nowadays, where so many nurses or students take online classes, cheating can happen anywhere. Who's to say this student wouldn't cheat at home as well? Or others in her class?

I don't know, it seems to me that online is making cheating a lot easier for those with low morals. Or am I wrong? I have had coworkers brag to me how they were cheating their way to an online BSN; nice, isn't it?

We/you can't stop them all. It will just have to catch up with them one day.

DeLana

[flashpoint]

My first post was really more of a vent than anything else. I obviously know and actually stated that I couldn't / wouldn't report her no matter what.

I've taken a bunch of online classes and most of the instructors have told us from the first day that the online tests are harder and have more questions because they KNOW people are going to use their books. I've never been on the campus off the college I was taking classes from. It is presumed that we won't cheat and the tests and homework made it pretty difficult to cheat...they have a lot of questions and they have questions that are more based on critical thinking and putting facts together than simply on basic facts.

This patient was close to the biggest pain in the butt I have ever taken care of. She did a whole lot of the "bend my straw" and "fluff my pillow" thing. She also had so many family members in her room that most of the time we had to fight to get into the room...and no matter how many times we asked them to leave, they were always back within a short time. She was noncompliant with her diet, orders to stay in bed after her spinal tap, family brought meds in for her, and her cell phone was glued to her ear constantly. She wouldn't even hang up for assessments.

Our nurse manager said she doesn't care if the foundation gave her $500 or $500,000,000...she isn't hiring someone who acts like that no matter how lousy she felt.