My nursing school is setting me up for failure in 4th semester clinicals due to my disability

Aug 22

I'm sorry—this is a lot, but I'm at a loss. I really appreciate advice/help from anyone who has experienced this or something similar.

Background Context: I am a BSN student with disabilities in my last year. I got into healthcare after being a patient for so long, and I am very passionate about my role as a provider. Despite a lot of virtue-signaling and false promises, I have had a persistent and constant fight every semester with the school and to have accommodations and implement them successfully ecp. in any clinical setting. At the beginning of the program, they dug into my background/personal circumstances, and I was told flat-out after trying to advocate for myself and ADA needs that I should leave due to disabilities, housing status, and income status. I have worked in nurse-related roles and spent years sacrificing to make this happen, and I was not going to give up that easily.

While there are a few rarer supportive clinical scholars, instructors, and preceptors, overall, this is not the case, and it has been a hell of a battle - not because of the content, lack of skill, lack of positive feedback, or lack of interest or enjoyment of being a nurse and interacting with patients but purely from the stress of a system so profoundly rooted in the harmful systemic problem under the guise of tradition and discriminatory practices that gatekeep who should be a nurse not based on skill but income/socio-economic status, health status/disabilty, and skin color. This has profoundly impacted my health and I have developed worsening health issues that providers and loved ones alike think is most likely due to the stress caused by the school. Yet, I do and have worked in challenging jobs with the same hours and structure successfully and will be afforded more freedom than in my current field of better career paths with nursing so I know once I have the degree it is not a matter of capability. I have two semesters left and my grades are good.

Current Dilemma: After being told that they thought one of my main issues was living and driving so far away from clinicals and the school, I was repeatedly told I needed to move. I moved closer to the school. I am going into complex care, which is one of my last major rotations before my capstone, and they assigned me to the Medical-Surgical Unit I used to work near my old apartment BEFORE I moved. I have nine rotations here, 2-3 back-to-back at a time, and it is 1.5 - 2 hours away from my new place. Not only does this afford me less than 6 hours of sleep, but sleep is one of my main treatments that prevent s/s, particularly the most conerning risk of having a passing out episode while on the floor or driving my car. More so, this is also a floor I worked on that got upset when a requested some basic accommodations (an issue I have not had with other places) or at least support in getting my 30-minute break and still has management in place that got in trouble for treating the floor nurses and techs terribly ultimately leading the majority of us to leave for better work, myself included. I worked there for a while as a medical-surgical tech. Unfortunately, all of the nursing individuals with any power - manager, assistant manager, clinical educators, and a couple of others had a online meeting with staff that was a monthly meeting supposedly to work together to check in and help with improving working conditions, teamwork, and pateint care. The meeting was recorded for those of us to see if we did not make it. They forgot to stop the recording when the meeting finished and went on to say absolutely horrific things about the staff providing direct patient care - nurses and techs; and how they were not going to listen to us and laughing at the staff, naming specific people and calling them names and such. It caused an immediate up-roar and tension between the direct care workers and management. Management immediately took the recording down and blocked all staff from obtaining any recording as soon as they realized they had not turned it off and saw it was still recording - including the recording audio and transcript.

They eventually responded to the nurse uproar by firing the nursing manager BUT only to elect the assistant nursing manager who was involved as the new unit manager and keep or promote everyone else involved. I also had been involved in an accommodation request that took 6+ months to get a response after the third party "lost my record" and refiling that kept getting no response. They would not only not respond to it but kept putting me on the schedule after I was put on leave because it was unsafe to return to work, which made my co-workers and the new workers who did not know me (since they quickly were losing people) upset as they thought I was just not showing up. I tried many times at first and once again after they denied my claims to offer to be transferred to a more suitable placement within the company and told them I would be grateful for the support to do so but they refused.

My fate for nursing school now depends on my performance in this unit, and multiple subjective P/F judgments rely solely on clinical scholars, management, and preceptors' opinions. I am pretty sure all of the great team members who were direct patient care workers (nurses and PCT) I worked with left, but know those in positions involved or close to the members involved have stayed, and some of them may be judging me and my clinical educators. The school requires that we list all the specific information of past and present employment. Hence, they know I was previously employed there AND had multiple letters from providers about how forcing me to operate without adequate rest is crucial to prevention of any s/s that would interfere with my ability to perform safely.

I am just at such a loss and feel so powerless and hopeless. They have placements with every hospital group across the largest city in the state and surrounding cities and have the most connections (something they LOVE to brag about) of any nursing school in the state. They could have placed me literally anywhere but this unit. But nope. There is an established conflict of interest, and passing and failing is completely subjective to the person grading, regardless of how much you try to prepare as a student and how well you do with the patient.

Is there anything I can do? How in the world do I survive this? Classes start this week, and clinicals start in the next two weeks. Is it all out of my hands? Could the past 4+ years be for nothing? A few semesters ago, I contacted some legal resources for advice and received a free consultation from a lawyer who said that all my accommodations were reasonable according to ADA guidelines and supported my provider's recommendations. But I quickly found that, like most lawyers, even if they pay you back if they lose, you need a particular down payment or deposit to receive services. I am below the poverty line and cannot afford it, so I did not. But now am considering going into more debt to do it (I have about $20,000 in student loans and $2,100 in credit cards due to the cost of living versus income). Is that ridiculous?

My nursing school is setting me up for failure in 4th semester clinicals due to my disability

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