Institutional problems

[NURwhoknows?]

Good afternoon. I really don't intend for this to be a rant. I need advice on if anything can or should be done. I have 1 semester and 1 week of school left before I complete my ADN. My school has always had its problems with communications throughout the nursing department as well as multiple other problems with teachers being unwilling to help students and inability to teach the content. However, this semester has gotten even worse. We are down to one full time instructor that is making her own tests and not teaching the content for each exam. Her test questions are not grammatically correct to the point that she uses words meaning for the to represent different definitions. We now have 6 people passing out of a class that started with 92 students. Our exams are outlined in the syllabus but when we take the test there is different content on it. The program director and dean of students have been no help at all. Is there anything we can do at this point to see change. After next week there will be only a few left. Please help!

[llg, PhD, RN]

1. Does your State Board of Nursing know about the situation? If not, they should. Ask them to look into it.

2. Does the school claim to be accredited by any agency? If so, contact that agency, tell them the situation and ask for them to look into it.

3. Talk to a lawyer. It is too late to "fix" your education. You are not being taught properly and there is not enough time to fix everything and re-teach you before you graduate. Your best bet is to come to a legal settlement with the school to refund you money (and maybe even compensate you for your time and effort.) That's a legal matter and you will need an attorney to address it. It is not a nursing question.

Good luck to you and your classmates.

[NURwhoknows?]

We have heard rumors that the state is involved but I don't know for sure if that is true. I feel that there is no point in going to class because we teach ourself the content anyway. By no means do I mean to imply that I don't go to class because I never miss one. There has also been a lot of questionable activity going on such as people's grades getting changed without explanation, high scores being noted on grading outline with no one claiming the grades, and documentation of clinical time missing for groups of 5-7 people. There is something fishy going on but how do we prove it? When we ask about content on the syllabus being different than contenton the test, we are told it would fall under nursing implications. For instance, the question can clearly be about std's but since the syllabus says nursing implications under the topic myasthenia gravis, she feels that includes nursing implications for anything. It's rediculous. My class has been afraid to go to higher authorities up until this point for fear of repercussions but what else can they do to us? We are looking at failing out of the program or by chance passing the program but failing boards. It's time for action. I just hope someone will believe us.

[tiggertiffany, ADN, RN]

I would definitely contact the board of nursing for your state. These problems happen everywhere and if they are unaware of the issue they cannot fix it. Just a tip that I learned on my own - never rely on others to correct the situation/report it or rumors. I relied on my DON, she failed to follow through, I then depended on the head of the school to correct the issues, failed to follow through, I had a hearing with the board of the school, failed to acknowledge the issues and I was the one suffering in the end. I let the board of nursing know and now they are correcting the issues because they have their approval to teach nursing education on the line.

Honestly, I would encourage you to learn from my mistake and make that phone call right away! Sorry to see others are going through similar issues. Very disheartened