Tracey2bRN

Our school told us that it was not a requirement to graduate at the beginning of the program but then changed it to a requirement. The first time I took it, I made a 1139. The school provided a 3 day NCLEX review and then wanted us to retake it to see our scores. I made a 1037 on the second try.:uhoh21: I have to admit that on the 2nd try, someone had on perfume or something on that was making my nose run like crazy and I had to keep getting up to go out and blow my nose and it really hurt my concentration. I'll take boards late January or early February. Good luck to you all Tracey

More than anything I've experienced in my 41 years. The politics were the stuff nightmares are made from!! I just have one more final to take and I am finished. My advice? Stay below the radar and do not make waves NO MATTER WHAT.

It's the same thing that you are talking about that probably came with your book, but instead of Med-Surg, this is Peds. The MEd-surg ones weren't too bad, but I don't think I learned anything from them. They took a lot of time and I feel that I could've better spent that time reading. The Peds ones are ridiculously hard and not well organized. They will tell you to sign into period of care 2 and watch a video and then answer questions related to the video, but since it's in real time, you might have to wait 30 minutes for the video to appear. BUT...they told you the wrong period of care, so you have to go into other periods of care and wait 30 minutes and see if the video ever appears. It'll say at the beginning of the exercise that it should take 20 minutes, but the video won't appear until you've been on the floor for 30 minutes, so how can that be? At the end you have to print off the evaluation to show that you haven't made med errors and that you checked the patient's armband, etc., but they have misspelled some of the names of the meds in the program that checks your work, so even if you have it right, it counts it wrong. (example, morphine prints out morpine on the evaluation check sheet and since you gave the patient morphine (spelled correctly on the MAR) you fail. GRRRRR!!! We are all frustrated and understand that the instructors want to see tangible evidence that we've been studying, but we would rather write a paper or have a pop quiz or do workbook pages because we are all so fed up with these. The program in theory is a wonderful idea, but I wish we could d/c them until the kinks are worked out. (We have 5 due on Thursday, it took me approximately 30 hours to complete them, mostly because of program errors, and now I'm behind on my reading.) I was just wondering what others think about them. Thanks,

Do any of you have to do Virtual Clinical Excursions? If so, what do you think of them? We have to do them for class and we are all having problems with them. Right now we are doing the pediatric ones and several of the lessons are really messed up. I have heard that a lot of the schools that tried them have thrown them out because of this. I would love to hear some other opinions!! Thanks!!

Our passing score is 77%, and I don't have a problem with that. What does bother me is that you have to have 95 or higher for an A. No one has ever made an A in the nursing classes. I've missed it 2 times by 1 point. My GPA went from a 4.0 to a 3.5 very quickly! Tracey PS, I agree that the passing standards should be very high!!

I am in my 3rd semester of Nursing (ADN) and can tell you that in my program, we've had to know A LOT of A&P. I've had some future students ask what advice I would give them based on my experience and I told them that the more they study A&P, the easier nursing fundamentals and Med Surg nursing will be for them as well as pharmacology. There were a couple of students that took A& P online and said they never had to study and they got to use their books for tests and they really struggled. One didn't make it through. Just my opinion... Tracey

I found a great one to help with a&P and Fundamentals. It's http://www.studystack.com Click on medicine and take it from there. I have come up a letter grade since utilizing this site!! Tracey in FL

Thanks for all the information. That helps to know what to expect. (I will probably change my mind a few times while in clinicals, but so far, CCU is what I am drawn to. Thanks!! Tracey

Hi. I am starting RN school next week. In thinking "down the road", I am wondering how to get certification for a specialty. For example, if I wanted to become a critical care nurse, how would I go about getting certification? Just wondering... Tracey