1/2 nursing class cut, WHY??

joanna73, BSN, RN · Jul 20, 2011

Most nursing programs lose about 50 percent or more. Not everyone is cut out for nursing. In my program, we started with close to 1200 in year one. Less than 500 graduated in year four. People leave or they are weeded out for various reasons in a BSN. You need to be clinically competent AND pass the academic portion of the program in order to succeed.

tthor5220 · Jul 20, 2011

I was in ADN school 1992-94. As I recall, we lost less than a third of the starting class. Some for personal reasons and a few for math test problems. It seems ADN programs are very different in certain schools and I am sure the tougher economic and employment times have made a difference these days. Good luck in all cases.

>30yrsRN · Jul 20, 2011

Yes in community colleges I saw this happen even back when I was in a CC we started out with 214 and 222 had sign up for the Nursing program. Then only 77 graduated and 2 did not past the state boards the first time, One of the two never ending up passing. I know that RN Diploma school have been know to kick nurse out the last week failing clinical or some other reasons! Some people do not know how to use their critical thinking skills when it cones to making descision about a patients care and life. Some think they are above bedside nursing even when in college and want to try to avoid patient contact even on clinical, well obviously that does not work. How ever I think Diploma Nursing Programs have a very high average of graduates and now most come out with a AS and Diploma in Nursing. I wonder what the average age of a new AA or BSN nurse is now, Nursing needs more nurses but I think the AS degree should now be a three year program since there is a lot more to learn and the nursing student can then concentrate and study Nursing more.

Lori66 · Jul 20, 2011

I just finished nursing school and by the end of first semester, several were weeded out. The program is not easy. If your prerequ. Classes seem hard, they have nothing on the nursing program at least not the one I attended. If you are serious about a nursing career and are willing to put in the time and effort you will be fine. When you hear people say you will do nothing but eat and sleep nursing for the whole time, they are not joking. You will even dream procedures. Make sure your sure this is what you want and then work hard at it. If you have a family tell them you'll see them again when the program is over. Good luck to you.

cdsga · Jul 20, 2011

Nursing school is not that easy, and alot of people don't realize what's involved until they are in it. We are talking about caring for humans-that means life and death situations and all the stuff in between. It's always been an undervalued profession and it is certainly a calling. If you're not serious about it, don't try to be a nurse. It's hard work and it requires sacrifice away from family and friends. It is a good profession in that it is monetarily good for the first few years, but statistics show that after about 10-15 years your salary is capped. With that said, you better not enter nursing for the money. It's a higher calling than that, and you will find yourself unhappy/miserable if money/security is your main motivation.

brillohead, ADN, RN · Jul 20, 2011

My ADN program has a minimum requirement of B- on pre-reqs like Anatomy and Physiology, and we still lost 50% of our class in the first semester.

My Fundamentals instructor told me that research shows that people (in general, not just in my program) who score lower than a B+ in A&P are SIGNIFICANTLY less likely to succeed in nursing school and/or NCLEX. They're thinking about changing their requirement because of the huge numbers who don't make it out of the first or second semesters.

My school is a community college, and they have always had an "open door" type of policy for academics -- they don't like to refuse admittance to anyone, which is why they have the "low" B- requirement and have resisted raising that requirement in the past. I'm wondering if they maybe won't have a combined requirement in the future, like either a minimum B+ in A&P *or* a minimum B- in A&P along with a minimum ACT/SAT/HESI/TEAS score, etc.

In our program, you have to have a 77.5% (the lowest end of the C range) in any nursing class to pass and continue on to the next semester, and they're upping the limit to 78% starting with the fall semester. A lot of the first-semester folks who failed missed the cutoff by 1-2 percentage points, and most of them are going to re-enter the program next year.

I'm second-semester right now, doing Med-Surg I and Pharmacology, and I'm guessing that up to 1/3 of our class won't be passing this semester either due to Med-Surg or Pharm (or both). We have 80 students in Med-Surg right now, and only 64 spots available for students in the fall class (OB/Peds), so I'm guessing it's pretty common for them to lose 20% of the students from Med-Surg, since they didn't even create enough openings for everyone currently in the program for next semester.

cdsga · Jul 20, 2011

Standards should be high--I don't want a dumb dumb taking care of me.

Lmjacobs · Jul 20, 2011

It's not that the faculty deliberately tries to "weed" out half of your class in most cases. Nursing school is hard, mostly because of the amount of information you have to be able to absorb in a short amount of time. It takes many hours of studying just to get by and only the very best in our class manage to get A's. I am in a BSN program and half way thru as of last semester and we have lost about 15 of 40 since starting. They have all been for different reasons as well besides failing courses. At my school we have to take a dosage calc test before every semester and not passing it is one of the ways we've lost classmates. So, my point is that to make it through nursing school, you have to have a lot of discipline and spend a lot of hours with your text books.

TammiCNA · Jul 20, 2011

I just graduated in May 2011 with my ADN degree in nursing and passed the nclex-RN 3 weeks ago. I guess I need to change my username now. =) We started out with 80 and 40 graduated. No one dropped out. One was lost in clinicals because she talked about her patients' to others, violating confidentiality. So, the majority who didn't make it were for academic reasons. Our school requires 80% as the bare minimum to pass. Normally, that would be a "B"......in nursing school it's virtually an "F".

MisMatch, LPN · Jul 20, 2011

I attended a community college LPN program. There were prereqs and getting into clinicals was very competitive. Despite that, of 24 that started the year long (3 semester) clinical part only 9 graduated. Most were lost in the first semester; 2 were flunked out

Many were unable to keep up with the enormous workload, especially those with families and/or working. The school bragged about their 100% pass rate for the NCLEX. It was said that those the school didn't think would pass the NCLEX wouldn't get through the program. Grading is both objective (written tests) and subjective (grading the clinical work). There was definately favoritism when it came to subjective grading.

iadoregon · Jul 20, 2011

The years before my class, were on a wait-list status. If you waited long enough, no matter your grades, you got in. At that time, 72 started and about 50% finished. Obviously things come up when you have to wait around two to three years to get into a school. Who knows for sure why half the class did not finish. Then the school changed its policy. My class was the first class that entrance was based solely on merit. Most of us were 4.0 going in. This caused quite a conundrum the second year. The staff was faced with 67 students still in the curriculum. The had not planned for this and there were not enough clinical spots during the Psych rotation. Believe me, they tried their damnedest to get rid of us during the first year. One teacher in particular was quite upset and accused us of cheating if more than half the class passed her exams (77%).

There ended up being 63 of us left for the very last exam. Guess who's exam it was? Not only did the entire class pass but many of us got high scores. OUR ENTIRE CLASS was accused of cheating and the Nurse Administrator threatened to fail all of us unless we confessed that someone had stolen the exam and passed it out to us. Since no one did, and there was no way to prove it, they could not do anything about it. God forbid we hadn't studied our a$$es off for the hardest teacher for the very last exam...

I believe all but one or two of us passed our NCLEX the first time in the 72 question range. We obviously knew what we were doing.

On a side note, Karma does happen sometimes. That same teacher was fired and had her license stripped several years later for stealing prescription pads and narcotics from the hospital.

Also, if you failed out of our school, you were never allowed back in the program. You had to find another school. A girl in my class finally had the nerve to challenge that "rule" with a lawyer and she got back in the next year.

olliesmommy1005 · Jul 20, 2011

We've lost about 1/2 our class as well, it's either grades, lack of interest, or being worn out! It's a HARD program to get through and some people just have trouble!