Question Banks Nursing School

[312nurse]

Are these a myth or do they actually exist and are students allowed to use them to study for exams?

[JustBeachyNurse, LPN]

They exist and are intended for instructors to use as validated test questions. They are not intended for student use. The questions are created by experts in educational pedagogy and assessed for bias and validity. It's considered academic dishonesty for students to use instructor test banks. They are legitimately sold by textbook publishers to schools and instructors with verified credentials.

[springchick1, ADN, RN]

At my school (and most school) they were considered cheating and you were dismissed from the program.

[cracklingkraken, ASN, RN]

At my school (and most school) they were considered cheating and you were dismissed from the program.

This. And if you use a test bank for exams, where's the motivation to study? Then, you'll essentially graduate learning nothing and fail the NCLEX. IOW, don't use test banks.

[Kuriin, BSN, RN]

It's not cheating if they are actual review text books that happen to have questions in them. For an example, my school regularly used the Davis MedSurg/Maternity/Pediatric books for their test questions. Unethical? Yep. Cheating? No.

[Rose_Queen, BSN, MSN, RN]

It's not cheating if they are actual review text books that happen to have questions in them. For an example, my school regularly used the Davis MedSurg/Maternity/Pediatric books for their test questions. Unethical? Yep. Cheating? No.

If those review books are available to public consumers (as in you can walk into a bookstore and purchase it), then why would it be unethical? It would be a choice of the school to use questions that students have perfectly legal rights to access via a purchased review book that reflects on the school rather than the students.

If they are books only available to schools and instructors, then it's an issue.

[JustBeachyNurse, LPN]

It's not cheating if they are actual review text books that happen to have questions in them. For an example, my school regularly used the Davis MedSurg/Maternity/Pediatric books for their test questions. Unethical? Yep. Cheating? No.

That is not a test bank. An instructor test bank is created by professional's credentialed & experienced in creating valid test questions based upon specific content. These test banks (either book or electronic) are sold by textbook publishers only to qualified professors verified teaching at nursing schools.

Questions at the end of text chapters are not unethical neither if an instructor elects to use questions from an NCLEX prep book such as Saunders. A student using a book or reference available to any student or the general public is not cheating or committing an ethics violation. My instructors would purposely take questions from the study guide workbook as we required to complete them as chapters were finished. Those that followed the course syllabus & teacher instructions had an advantage. Classmates that slacked and did as they pleased struggled.