Really bad test questions!!

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Don't you guys just hate it when there is a terrible test question! Here is a question, that I think sucks!!!

I can't remember the exact wording--

- You know that your patient has fully understood how to perform his creatine clearance test when he makes the following statment:

A: I will cath myself to get my specimen

B: I will completley empty my bladder into the container

C: It is okay if I accidentlly flush some urine down the toliet

D: I will collect all my urine for 24 hours

So--I picked B. However, my teacher says the answer is D. But, in a creatine clearance test you are supposed to throw away your very first morning urine (or at least that is what we were taught) My teacher admits that the question is bad--but wont give me the 2 points. I just don't understand how D can be correct, when you are not supposed to collect "all" of the urine.

Any insight?

Specializes in Critical Care - Adults, Peds & Neonates.
Maybe you need to brush up on your critical thinking skills.

Answer D is the ONLY answer that in any way describes the 24 hour urine collection, and it does so very simply. All other answers don't come close.

Lawd have mercy.......LOL!

You are probably right, though.....I ABSOLUTELY LOVE learning, knowing more and getting better at my craft! :redbeathe I shall get right to brushing up right now. Thanks! :up:

I have already indicated what I believe about the answer choices. I'm not going to debate this back and forth w/ someone who doesn't care about another legitimate view point. It's silly. :icon_roll I also don't have to prove to anyone how good I am at thinking critically. I don't need any ego boosts. I'm quite arrogant already. :lol2:

BTW, I only responded to you b/c this will get me to that magic 15 posts............LOL! Yippee!!!! :D I also wanted to use all of these cool smileys. :idea:

I'm done. :smokin:

Hey Lawyergirl!

This is NOT the courtroom, this is nursing. And, you cannot argue your point to the NCLEX exam that you are right because your answer is the most logical,, or that you were taught the wrong answer, it won't work. AGAIN, YOU CANNOT ARGUE YOUR WAY THROUGH NURSING. This is not a debate, and you need to be flexible as a nurse and realize that every situation is different. It's not about what you think, it's about the patient.

You really need to realize this if you will be successful in nursing school, and as a nurse.

As a nurse, if you have a patient crashing and you do the wrong thing and the patient dies, you will not be able to say "I was taught the wrong thing, forgive my indiscretion". No. It won't fly.

There are several distractors both on the NCLEX exam and clinically, have you ever worked with patients? If you had, you would have realized that patients will distract you from your duties with complaints from their yogurt tasting bad to their hair not being combed well, IT IS YOUR JOB AS A NURSE TO TEASE OUT WHAT IS IMPORTANT.

Again, I have worked clinically with patients, as others on this post, and I am in nursing school. At UIC, exams are worded with NCLEX style questions, and I do well each time because I figure out what's important, you need to be able to do the same to pass the NCLEX AND to be a great nurse.

Specializes in Critical Care - Adults, Peds & Neonates.
Hey Lawyergirl!

This is NOT the courtroom, this is nursing. And, you cannot argue your point to the NCLEX exam that you are right because your answer is the most logical,, or that you were taught the wrong answer, it won't work. AGAIN, YOU CANNOT ARGUE YOUR WAY THROUGH NURSING. This is not a debate, and you need to be flexible as a nurse and realize that every situation is important. It's not about what you think, it's about the patient.

You really need to realize this if you will be successful in nursing school, and as a nurse.

As a nurse, if you have a patient crashing and you do the wrong thing and the patient dies, you will not be able to say "I was taught the wrong thing, forgive my indiscretion". No. It won't fly.

There are several distractors both on the NCLEX exam and clinically, have you ever worked with patients? If you had, you would have realized that patients will distract you from your duties with complaints from their yogurt tasting bad to their hair not being combed well, IT IS YOUR JOB AS A NURSE TO TEASE OUT WHAT IS IMPORTANT.

Again, I have worked clinically with patients, as others on this post, and I am in nursing school. At UIC, exams are worded with NCLEX style questions, and I do well each time because I figure out what's important, you need to be able to do the same to pass the NCLEX AND to be a great nurse.

Umm....thanks. ;) Seriously, I appreciate your heart in explaining that to me. I sense that you love to help and I appreciate that. I love to help too. So...yay! :yeah:

I don't however know that you what you've indicated above has anything to do w/ well.....anything. I'm not at all trying to be mean here, but you're trying to turn this into a debate about whether the critical thinking skills that I have naturally as an overly analytical person (pre-law) and professionally (as an attorney) will work for me as a nurse. You don't know me personally (you don't know how flexible I am or how I deal w/ various distractions and pressures)....and it appears you don't know my current profession too well. You are making assumptions....and you know what happens when you make assumptions. :lol2:

I don't know that what you have indicated has anything to do w/ the original post or what I have indicated so far on this thread. We are discussing whether the test question given to the OP was a bad question and whether she and her class had a right to protest. Thereafter many folks (you being one) responded that b/c the OP had a problem w/ this question, she/he was not ready for NCLEX type questions/was not thinking critically.

I personally don't find such a response/assumption useful. Just b/c you don't agree w/ the OP, that doesn't mean that she (or I) will be ill-prepared for the NCLEX/nursing.

I don't practice in a courtroom these days, btw. I work from my office and I deal w/ "patients"/clients/distractions....everyday. I am forced to think critically when I am presented w/ the problems and issues that fly across my desk and computer, daily. If I don't thoroughly think these things through, there is GREAT possibility that my client will be subject to lawsuits/lose money (not the same as a person's life by any stretch), but to my boss/client......his money is his life. I enjoy what I do and I don't take it lightly.

I wish you much success in your endeavors, sallber. I am glad you are doing well. :)

Hey Lawyergirl!

This is NOT the courtroom, this is nursing. And, you cannot argue your point to the NCLEX exam that you are right because your answer is the most logical,, or that you were taught the wrong answer, it won't work. AGAIN, YOU CANNOT ARGUE YOUR WAY THROUGH NURSING. This is not a debate, and you need to be flexible as a nurse and realize that every situation is different. It's not about what you think, it's about the patient.

You really need to realize this if you will be successful in nursing school, and as a nurse.

As a nurse, if you have a patient crashing and you do the wrong thing and the patient dies, you will not be able to say "I was taught the wrong thing, forgive my indiscretion". No. It won't fly.

There are several distractors both on the NCLEX exam and clinically, have you ever worked with patients? If you had, you would have realized that patients will distract you from your duties with complaints from their yogurt tasting bad to their hair not being combed well, IT IS YOUR JOB AS A NURSE TO TEASE OUT WHAT IS IMPORTANT.

Again, I have worked clinically with patients, as others on this post, and I am in nursing school. At UIC, exams are worded with NCLEX style questions, and I do well each time because I figure out what's important, you need to be able to do the same to pass the NCLEX AND to be a great nurse.

Whoa, hold the phone there sparky! Lawergirl IS in nursing school and therefore we can extrapolate that she has worked with patients. She has also taken an infinitely more difficult test than the NCLEX--she passed the bar exam to be granted a license to practice law, additionally she had to take the LSAT in order to gain admission to law school. If you're unfamiliar with the LSAT I suggest you try googling it and try a free practice exam. Maybe then you'll see that she obviously has the requisite ability to think both critically AND logically.

She did not assert that she could "argue" her way out of missing a question on the NCLEX. She asserted that the question could be looked at from more than one point of view. If she's "guilty" of anything, it's being too skilled at thinking critically. Please explain how that is a bad thing as a nurse. Seriously, I'd love to know your rationale for that.

My nursing school did not use NCLEX style questions on tests. In fact, MANY of our questions were SO poorly worded that they were thrown out because a few people were brave enough to point that out to the instructor who wrote the test question. Several times the instructor would refuse to acknowledge that the question was either too ambiguous or that none of the answers could have possibly made any sense. It took going to the department head and pointing it out to her that put those few extra points on our tests or the question was thrown out and we were graded based on a different scale.

This reminds me of the mindset that some of my classmates had of me. They thought that because I excelled academically that I would not be able to be a good nurse on the floor. Apparently it didn't occur to them that a person can be both "book smart" and good on the floor as well. I've even read posts here on allnurses that promote that line of thinking.

As an aside, I had a classmate in nursing school who was a lawyer as well. Her ability to think criticallly was exceptional. But I guess you would have to be a lawyer in order to appreciate the difficulty of navigating through the enormous amount of research and studying that it takes to become one. Either that or just a smidgen of common sense. Of course being a lawyer doesn't automatically guarantee sucess on the NCLEX (of course), but she definitely has a leg up on how to study, how to extrapolate important information, how to implement what she knows with what she does, etc. Pointing out that she needs to know how to "tease out the important information" is just...ugh! As an attorney, I'm sure she has a lot of experience at being able to get to the core of an issue. Her skill set at communication, research, diligence, AND CRITICAL THINKING will serve her well in nursing school.

Oh, congrats on wrapping up your first year of nursing school. I'm sure that's why you are capable of determining who will and who won't be successful on the NCLEX.

I misinterpreted Lawergirls post, she is taking pre-reqs for nursing school and therefore is not in nursing school, and therefore might not have experience working with patients. But that doesn't detract from my previous post.

Specializes in Education, FP, LNC, Forensics, ED, OB.

Since OP has rec'd feedback from instructor regarding correct answer and clarification, will close thread.

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