just don't understand!

[Daisy02]

I just don't understand why clinicals can't count in our favor when figuring grades out for fundamentals, but it can count against us. does anyone else have this thought?

[PsychNurseWannaBe, BSN, RN]

Our lecture and clinical had separate grades

[kaydensmom01]

I don't know how they would grade you. In my clinical there is only 1 instructor to 9 students, needless to say we don't see her very often. How would they differentiate between A's, B's and C's. It works into the grades by them letting us pass clinical and moving on to the next semester. I agree that they should be able to fail us only due to clinical performance because it would be dangerous to have a nurse that got A's on tests but doesn't practice safely in the clinical setting after numerous errors.

[classicdame, MSN, EdD]

My state (and probably yours) requires a specific number of hours for nursing programs of all levels in order for the program to be certified. So this is counting "for" your grade. During the hours the state expects the student to cover specific clinical objectives. If you fail to meet the required hours or objectives that would count "against" you. The didactic portion is separate but you have to pass both in order to progress to the next level. Hope this helps.

[Nurse SMS, MSN, RN]

Our lecture and clinical had separate grades

This. In fact they are considered two separate classes.

[caroladybelle, BSN, RN]

Because you need to be able to do both well in nursing

[llg, PhD, RN]

A lot of schools stopped giving letter grades for clinicals (and just considering them a pass/fail course) because of their potential to draw grienvances, grade appeals, and/or law suits against the school. Because part of the grade would have to be subjective, students who were unhappy with their grades were filing grievances and/or suing schools, claiming that their instructor was biased against them for some reason.

It was too much of a headache for schools to deal with all those grade appeals -- and the risk of law suits was too great. Solution: make them simply a pass/fail and let the classroom activities, tests, papers, etc. determine the letter grades. A student either passes clinical and is allowed to progress or they don't. The don't need to justify who gets an A and who gets a B, etc. All they have to do is document in detail why they fail anybody. Other schools came up with variations on that theme.

That's why.

[kgh31386, BSN, MSN, RN]

Because you need to have the book knowledge/lecture portion as a foundation...so many people can perform skills, but you turn and ask them the "why" about it, the rationale, or the patho.....they have no clue.