Is ectopic pregnancy the leading cause of women's infertility?

[lpn2rnstudent]

I took an exam today and there was a true false question worded something like 'ectopic pregnancy is the leading cause of maternal death and the leading cause of infertility'.

I chose false.

I got the question wrong.

[IrishIzCPNP, MSN, RN, APRN, NP]

Well she said that the question is a test out of the test bank from our book.

If she's a reasonable instructor she should be willing to discuss this with you and allow you to show her what is in the book and how it compares to what you wrote.

In our school...the instructors are good about this because they know they don't know it all. Doesn't mean they always do things right but sometimes they will make the change.

[lpn2rnstudent, LPN, RN]

I wouldn't necessarily look at it as "she's wrong and incompetent." I think a better way to look at this is "she's not necessarily really good at writing questions that ask what she really wants to ask" and make sure you read and re-read the questions to figure out what she is REALLY asking. FWIW, I tried to re-word her question to make it read the way I think it was meant to (so you looked at both, and not one or the other), and it's a crappy true or false question. It really would have been better as a multiple choice ... such as "which condition is a leading cause of both infertility and maternal death during pregnancy?"

I have examined this issue in depth and there is really no way to get around the fact that I should not have gotten the question wrong.

The answer to the question is false, there is just no way to get around it.

Our tests during nursing school should be preparing us to take the NCLEX. Differentiating between being a leading cause and the leading cause can make a question correct or incorrect. After being shown the evidence, my instructor's refusal to throw out the question makes me question her competence as an instructor whose priority should be to teach and test on accurate information.

[lpn2rnstudent, LPN, RN]

If she's a reasonable instructor she should be willing to discuss this with you and allow you to show her what is in the book and how it compares to what you wrote.

In our school...the instructors are good about this because they know they don't know it all. Doesn't mean they always do things right but sometimes they will make the change.

I emailed her with the page numbers from my textbook with the same information I posted previously.

Her reply was that I did not have sufficient evidence to prove my point, yet as somewhat of a contradiction she stated that our textbook says that ectopic pregnancy is a cause of maternal death.

I want so badly to email her back and say of course ectopic is a cause of maternal death, but it is not the leading cause, which is exactly what the question said.

I have decided to just let this go for now. Unless these 2 points are the difference in an A or B, it is just not worth it to make it any more of an issue.

It is too bad that we are conditioned in nursing school to be somewhat submissive, yet in the real world it is so important for us to be assertive. You would think that nursing school would encourage students to be assertive. Unfortunately, it is deeply frowned upon and can cause many more problems in the long run.