Not passing 3rd semester ADN

NuGuyNurse2b · May 18, 2015

It might be a different phase at your ADN program. At mine, it was the 2nd semester that weeded out 1/3 of the class. That was the infamous med surg 1 course. I'm lucky because I failed 2 exams that semester (not royally bombed, just didn't make the cutoff by a 1 or 2 questions) but was able to dig myself out of the hole after speaking with my instructors. But anyway, I know people who failed out, re-applied, and did well the second time around. It's not the end of the world, pick yourself up and try harder next time. And seek help next time. I see the same pattern - classmates who do poorly (myself being one of them) and not reaching out to faculty. After the failed exam I sought help - what am I doing right/wrong. I'm getting most of the questions right but not enough to pass, so it's not the material I don't get, it's something else. My instructor nailed it on the spot - she asked if I had an NCLEX book, if I was doing practice questions - and I said no, I thought I could just study the material and manage. Wrong. Bought a practice exam book, did the questions, and soon I was able to "get" the nclex style questions.

nurseprnRN, BSN, RN · May 18, 2015

Our classes lost a big %age, about 25%, in the first three or four weeks when we all had students crying in our offices because they always wanted to be nurses but didn't really know they'd have to be doing more than fluffing pillows and "following orders," and would have to learn to take care of more than just happy mothers and babies, and would have to see, hear, smell, and touch things from many different adult bodies, AND would have to take a lot of hard science courses and remember them. Try as we might, we were never able to identify most of them before they matriculated; it was competitive to enroll and they were all bright enough, but somehow ... it was a shock to learn how hard it really was for some of them.

The next big attrition came in the 3rd semester, when the kids that squeaked through the CNA equivalent 1st semester and early med/surg 2 ran up against med/surg 3 in addition to peds/ob/psych. Those who couldn't make the transition to higher levels of thinking and remember and apply their coursework from the previous year were doomed. Lord knows we tried to help them make that leap, but marginal last year translated into failing this year, and that was that. We always lost a few in the 4th semester, too; people said that was not fair and too bad, but the same principle applied: Marginal means you can't always pull it together to make that next step.

Definitely learn this: you need to know why for everything. I had a student ask me how to study-- she'd done everything, and just wasn't doing it. She asked what she could possible do different..and this is the answer: she needed to stop focusing on memorization and start focusing on meanings, rationales, understanding the WHY of every fact she knew.

NCLEX (and nursing) expects you'll have some level of baseline fact knowledge, of course, but is much more concerned that you know how to think about using them when you have them.

Do you need to get more information? Why?

Do you understand what's important in a scenario or question, and what's not? Why?

Do you know what's expected? Why?

Do you know the effect of a drug? Why do we care?

Do you know what a lab value means? Why do we care?

So many more whys...

Why, why, why... it's the basis of everything we do, it's the foundation of critical thinking in three little letters. It's not something you have to do just to pass NCLEX, it's something every nurse has to do every day of a professional life.