So I have heard time and time again from nursing professors and clinical adjuncts that "4.0 students often have a hard time transitioning to the floor, B or C students make better nurses". While I totally get that there are some people out there that are so cerebral that they don't do well on the floor, I think this blanket statement is a bunch of bunk.
I bring this up because I am a 4.0 student. I am also involved in clubs and student groups, volunteer outside of school, and often get complimented in clinicals. However, even with that I still hear the comment over and over that A students don't make as good of nurses as B and C nurses.
What do you nurses who are actually out there on the floor think?
Oh, rarely does anyone ever ask me where I went to school, and nobody has ever asked me what kind of grades I got. Most coworkers want to know if I'm going to show up when scheduled, and if I can hold my own. Even better if I help others.
I want a 4.0 student, but I did graduate with a 3.8 and transitioned just fine to floor nursing. I think my externship helped.
I think there's a variety of reasons for that generalization.
1. It gives hope to the B and C students. Nursing isn't able taking tests or book smarts. It's encouraging for them to know they can be great nurses.
2. Sometimes students are getting lower grades because they're working while in school- often as a CNA or something similar. Meanwhile A students MAY have been able to get such good grades because they focused solely on school, thus, clinicals were their only patient contact experiences.
3. As previously mentioned, A students may expect success in all endevours immediately. It may be hard to accept that starting a new nursing job has a steep learning curve. For everyone.
What do you nurses who are actually out there on the floor think?
I don't care what your GPA is; if you have no experience taking care of people, you are going to have a lot more trouble learning the profession than classmates with extensive direct care experience. For some reason, people like to highlight the A students who have trouble. I don't know why this is - perhaps they expect the C students to be clueless?
The C students with zero experience taking care of patients are just as bad as the A students with the same lack of experience..
Grades don't dictate how someone will do on the floor. I know plenty nurses who were "book smart" in school and still do excel in the clinical environment, while I also know those who are "book smart" and have a hard time working the floor. I must say though that I'm one who believes that most nurses can become great nurses (if not already) only given the right environment and support system.
Joseyjo live above the influence, I think its ill founded, unintelligent, and borderlines ignorant superstition to facilitate biases towards students who are high academic achieves, ironically our allopath and osteopath friends don't foster those views. I did great in my hard sciences and happened to be a great EMS provider, even became an FTO for awhile. Until a respected academic/professor collects data on that inference and publishes their finding in a peer reviewed journal showing yearly trends that A type students fair less in clinicals than B or C students thats all hog wash and shows that the individual professor in question is more of a facilitator than a true academic mentor. Clarification, a facilitator that is more interested in labeling their students early on during clinicals needs to visit their interpersonal communication colleagues. It's absolutely unprofessional to create those labels as an educator.
Bah. There are two ways in which a person normally gets a 4.0 GPA - hard work or smarts. Tell me which one you'd like your nurse to have less of.
Getting a 4.0 isn't a guarantee you'll be a good nurse, because the vast majority of nursing isn't taught in school, but if you've got a 4.0 then you don't need to worry that you're somehow doomed or marked or something. Because the traits that get you good grades can help you to be a great nurse if you continue to apply them to your practice throughout your career. The risk is coming out thinking your 4.0 means you're hot **** and failing to continue developing, when in reality your nursing degree is a drop in the bucket of what you need to know to be a good nurse. That's got nothing to do with your smarts, though, and everything to do with your personality.
I've always just heard that grades don't make the nurse in general. We have various white boards throughout our school where people have written "C's get degrees." [emoji106]🻠As long as we make it through and pass NCLEX, and then work hard once we start working, who cares how you got there.
I honestly don't have a clue what grades my coworkers got while in school, nor do I care. I can see there might be a correlation between being a good student and being a good nurse, but I don't think it is necessary.
Since I haven't passed out any surveys asking what the crappy nurses grades were, I honestly don't know.
I made yo-yo grades and I am a damn good nurse. (ADHD'ers understand.) I don't even remember what my GPA was by the end of nursing school. It was at least a 3-something.
I had a 4.0 for a couple of years here and there in various institutions. I failed a whole semester once and still ended up with a 3.0 in one of 'em.
Grades don't mean as much to me as does application and critical thinking.
However, the drive it takes to get those good grades comes in awful hand in any career.
BTW - med schools and lawyers graduate B & C students, too, who pass the boards. That argument is a fallacy.
I think it depends on a ton of factors. I left a previous career and started nursing school. It was so time-consuming (just an associate's degree, but including all the pre-reqs in the 2 years) that I definitely felt I didn't have time to try to get a job as an HCT. I had a 4.0 all through school because I'm good at reading and remembering and (usually) linking things together, and I don't get major test anxiety (which was about 80% of our grade). However, other than clinicals, I had NO patient-care experience when I graduated (except for some family stuff). It took me a long time to get my time-management to a point where I could get all my cares done and all my charting done and leave on time.
I still leave some days and have a sinking feeling in my stomach because I know there's something I wanted to do and just didn't get to. Other co-workers are (or at least they seem) much more relaxed--"It's a 24-hour job," "Just let me know what you didn't get to and I'll see if I can get to it." [i'm not talking about late meds or anything, but shaving a pt, or changing out IV tubing that is due today--even though I work nights, so there's 16 more hours of the day to change it!] I think my perfectionist traits that helped me do well in school work against me here.
2 1/2 years in, though, I still have the job I was hired for. I've lost count of how many other new grads were hired and didn't finish orientation in that time. I don't know how many of them were 4.0 students (or 3.0, or whatever), and probably some of them decided they didn't like BICU but were doing okay whereas others were told that they weren't progressing well enough. I'm glad I'm still there, even on the days that are hard!
True story. My uncle was on a hiring committee to hire engineers for a certain position. They hired the people with the best grades from top universities. The engineers they hired had a huge turnover rate. The brilliant new guys wanted to do original design, not keep the wheels of industry turning. The job they were hired for did not satisfy their desire to create and shine like stars do.
Eventually the hiring committee realized that the highest priority they were looking for in a job candidate was a strong work ethic. They looked for people who had worked their way through school, but did not necessarily have top grades. The turnover rate went way down when the job was well-matched to the person.
AZQuik
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Oh, rarely does anyone ever ask me where I went to school, and nobody has ever asked me what kind of grades I got. Most coworkers want to know if I'm going to show up when scheduled, and if I can hold my own. Even better if I help others.