CareFully

Community Colleges have long waiting lists as a weeding out system and a very small percentage of students ever make it to the top.. They make students take Anatomy and physiology for the medical professions and various other prerequisites, usually with a minimum of a B- in order to even progress up the list. At my school, about 50% of students who take A&P 1 and 2, fail out of them, let alone pulling a B- to make it in. It is the most applied to program on a campus with thousands of students, yet they only graduate about 12 nurses a year. Of the 36 students that make it into their first clinical, only a 3rd will graduate. You have to work your butt off to have any hope of graduating from an ADN program, and this community college consistently has a higher NCLEX pass rate than any of the BSN programs in the state. I have found that the ADN programs often churn out fewer graduates, and have 2+2 agreements with the four year schools if you make it through because the courses are considered equivalent for transfer. If you survive the program, you also save a substantial amount of money. Add to that the stress of trying to do well in 9 credit courses rather than the 3 credit courses that could be repeated more easily if necessary. Aside from having the higher NCLEX pass rates where I live, graduates from this community college are also hired at a much greater rate than the grads from the several (ridiculously expensive) BSN schools near here as new grads. It is known how difficult the program is to get through, and that our school provides a great deal of clinical experience.

Some of my daughter's newborn pictures have nurses in them, but not during the performance of procedures and they seemed okay with it at the time. I agree that it wouldn't be a HIPAA violation because it wasn't taken by a healthcare worker. It is a big problem if the nurse feels uncomfortable with it and the patient will not delete it. It may have been a little late after that first picture, but it might help to mention to the patient that cellphones can interfere with hospital equipment.

Well, first of all, I do not care if you believe me. The program that I am in has a long waiting list, and numerous prerequisite classes that tend to weed out those who do not have nearly perfect GPAs and excellent study habits. Chances are that all of those people who annoy you by saying they have high averages, actually do...hence why they got into these programs to begin with. Our class was told that nobody would get an "A" and that those who got through it would probably do so with between a 75 0r 80. In 9 credit courses that causes significant, unnecessary damage to our transcripts and long run transfer prospects. Perhaps you do not care about your grades, but I do. Studying for the sake of doing well should be enough? No. Some of us are not simply looking for a passing grade, especially those with master's degree goals. What is up with your "grow up", text-messaging obsessed commentary anyway? I noticed on your profile that you have not given Kudos to any postings written by others. Are you just in the habit of insulting others instead? As for nursing school being mostly self-taught, yes, you are right that this is to be expected. However, if the testing is not over material assigned, then no we should not be expected to pull it out of the ether. It should horrify patients to know that many of these test questions can be answered without learning the medical material because all that really matters in nursing school is whether you are familiar with NCLEX-style questions. If the professors cannot even agree on the right answers themselves, then it is not a measure of critical thinking, but rather a measure of the thinking of the author of that particular question. Clinical has been the one area of nursing school that has not been scholastically disappointing.

Honestly, this comment was rather uncalled for. Expecting to be taught what one is going to tested on is hardly too much to ask. I have taken a great many college courses in my lifetime, and in any other program it would be expected that the material would actually be covered. That is why professors are made to write a syllabus. I have maintained a high grade point average throughout school, and your statement that I should go back to text messaging about a party...just because I have the same complaint that has been made by my entire class says more about your ability to empathize with others than it does about me. Do you talk to your patients like that? Furthermore, our exams are written by six different professors who frequently disagree on the answers themselves.

Why are CNAs paid less than telemarketers? They perform manual labor jobs which involve tasks that much of the general public would consider too gross to do. They provide one-on-one patient care and witness grief and death. Why are they paid so little? Is it that the hospital administration does not want to pay employees adequately? I did not work as a CNA before nursing school, but I have witnessed some disturbing attitudes toward assistants, and would like some perspective. Thanks!

How exactly does it work? Do you need to be an LPN first? It looks to me like you just need to be half way through your clinicals to transfer to Excelsior. It certainly seems more efficient. Do you know what the CPNE will involve? Thank you for the advice!

1. I wish that Nursing school could be done at a slower pace, part-time so that we could actually devote time to memorizing the material rather than cramming it in. From what I can tell, the rule that we must complete the ADN in 3 years is that it would lower the schools rates on paper for what % graduate in that amount of time. I personally, have responsibilities outside of nursing school. I am a full-time mom first, and a nursing student second. I have gotten Straight-As in all college course work up until this point, but before clinical courses began I was able to devote actual time to studying. The cramming and the stress are utterly unnecessary to the learning process. I would rather have the option of slowing down to memorize the material, even if takes an extra couple of years to get through the program. 2. Why is it that nursing school must grade entirely on NCLEX-style questions that cannot be fully prepared for? Of course it matters that we pass the NCLEX, but for many that is not the final goal. If nobody will get an "A", and the entire class ends up just hoping to pass, it hurts our ability to transfer into higher level programs later. How does it benefit the image of nurses as highly educated professionals to keep them out of graduate school programs or make their GPAs less competitive? I know that many schools receive funding based on their NCLEX pass rates, but this should NOT be used to justify these grading methods. It harms more students than it helps, especially those with higher educational goals than just getting through the NCLEX. 3. The lectures and the textbook readings should at least moderately relate to what we are tested on. If we are presented with a bunch of NCLEX-style questions, and we were not actually taught that material...do not say something insulting like "Use your critical thinking". Every one of us uses critical thinking, or we would not have made it into the program to begin with. Nursing students are generally adults, most of whom have had prior careers, and we do not benefit from being talked down to. You may mean well, and you may have convinced yourself that this is educationally necessary. Let me assure you that these tactics are insulting, reminiscent of basic training, and not indicative of our learning potentials. Base your grading on what you have actually taught, not on the NCLEX itself. I don't care about your school's exam %. I do care that I be graded on the material given, and rewarded for effort. It seems to me that schools are so desperate to keep their NCLEX funding that they weed out the students in Fundamentals who aren't already good at this test style. Those of us who had the highest test scores in the class were the ones who figured out early to focus on NCLEX practice books more than on the assigned reading material. Many of these questions can be answered without memorizing the real material, and that should scare patients. When did the nursing process itself become more important than learning how to heal, and not kill people? It is just ridiculous. I can do NCLEX practice tests at home in my spare time. That is not what I am paying for. 4. If your school has the audacity to advertise the program to the general scholastic population as a regular major, then it should be an entry level program. Those of us who do not have a decade of CNA experience should not be expected to know how to do things before you teach them. I don't want to watch a short video made in the 1970s and then be expected to perform a procedure. Give a demonstration, and adequate practice time in lab. Remember that we waited on long lists and maintained perfect grades in our prerequisites to get into these programs. 5. Focus on educating us, not on weeding out the perceived undesirables. We lost several people from our Fundamentals class who would have made wonderful nurses. We have kept a few of the less empathetic souls however. society wants empathetic, intellectual, nurturing nurses. From what I have witnessed, those are the students who mostly drop out. The hardened students, and the ones who care only to pass (regardless of GPA) are the ones who make it. Who does that actually benefit? 6. I love patient care, and clinical :heartbeat. I loved my clinical instructor because she was kind. :heartbeat Others were not so lucky. I would have a hard time actually respecting a clinical instructor who was otherwise. Respect students if you want them to respect you on more than a superficial level. 7. I hate long lectures where the professor just reads directly off a Powerpoint first thing in th morning. That is pretty much wasted study time. I can read a Powerpoint online, as I have in many other classes. If you are not going to actually tell us what we need to memorize, and what will be on the exam, there is little reason to wake up at 6am to go to lecture every day. Everything I learned in lecture could have been taught as an online course. Only clinical and lab required attendance. It is hard as an adult student who has taken numerous online classes to not notice that this could be done much more efficiently. In nursing school, efficiency is everything. 8. It is substantially more stressful to take 9 credit courses than 3 credit courses. Why do the ADN programs do this? If you just need to retake a 3 credit course, that is reasonably doable. Too many people in my program have had to repeat the entire 9 credits. It makes me wish that I had chosen to go directly into a BSN, even though my school has a 2+2 transfer agreement. 3 credit courses would have been substantially less stressful for me.

I agree with the ex-cop on this one. What happened in the UK was hearsay. Furthermore, mother-in-law issues are hardly uncommon and spousal issues are also not rare. If you did not witness domestic violence in front of a child with your own eyes, then you don't really have any situation to report. I think that it is important to use a little bit of discretion, and choose your battles. Clearly this mother is involved in her children's care, and frankly, she probably cares about her children more than you do. Unless you actually witness abuse that would justify a child growing up in the foster care system as an orphan, stay out of their family business.

I would actually recommend a BSN program over an ADN if you have children and here is why: The BSN programs tend to break the courses up into smaller credit hour classes. For instance, you might have three 3-credit nursing classes one semester in a BSN. If you do poorly in one, you can retake that 3 credit course. If you do poorly in one aspect of an ADN program, you could fail a 9 credit course, and then your GPA may not be high enough to stay in the program. Furthermore, you are learning enough info to sit for the NCLEX in less time, making the program more accelerated.