Feel very fortunate to have gone to a "care-bear" nursing school: small class room sizes, accessible instructors with forgiving grading styles. Everything was taught, but the pressure was to just know the material, and to learn how to think critically, not to jump through hoops, and "prove yourself worthy of the calling" according to some RN's opinion of what that means.
What I read here gives me pause: nursing school, for many students looks like descent into a temporary hell where, like marine corps boot camp, the objective seems to be to tear you down and wash you out, before building you up and equipping you.
It doesn't have to be that way.
No wonder so many nurses are over-competitive and bitter even after they get into the work place; they've been conditioned.
So you all think that we should be babied along and be given breaks at every turn? I disagree. We are dealing with people's lives here and we shouldn't be let off easy. Being an easy marker or letting mistakes go uncorrected may keep everyone happy but what kind of nurses will it make us?
So you all think that we should be babied along and be given breaks at every turn? I disagree. We are dealing with people's lives here and we shouldn't be let off easy. Being an easy marker or letting mistakes go uncorrected may keep everyone happy but what kind of nurses will it make us?
I didn't see anyone say that we should be babied, let off easy, or let mistakes go uncorrected. What I did see were people commenting about the advantages to being in a program where you are supported by your peers and instructors as opposed to being pitted against each other.
There's a huge difference between a solid education and boot camp. The point was that you can still be trained to be an amazing, confident nurse without being belittled or ridiculed by those educating you.
So you all think that we should be babied along and be given breaks at every turn? I disagree. We are dealing with people's lives here and we shouldn't be let off easy. Being an easy marker or letting mistakes go uncorrected may keep everyone happy but what kind of nurses will it make us?
Nope. What I am saying is that the material is hard enough without making harder by adding in all the unnecessary stress.
A big part of the problem seems to be that nursing instructors have to be nurses. They don't really have to be teachers. Of course they usually have MSN-Ed degrees but all that means is that they decided they want to teach. It doesn't mean they know how. I can count on one hand the nursing instructors I had who really had "the gift" and by all accounts, that four or five is a surplus by many school standards.
The addition of all the nonsense about grading an 80% as a C and suchlike is just asinine, destructive of student morale, and conducive to the continuation of a culture which is already known for unnecessary competition and the eating of their own young.
"I didn't see anyone say that we should be babied, let off easy, or let mistakes go uncorrected. What I did see were people commenting about the advantages to being in a program where you are supported by your peers and instructors as opposed to being pitted against each other. There's a huge difference between a solid education and boot camp. The point was that you can still be trained to be an amazing, confident nurse without being belittled or ridiculed by those educating you." Quoted by WorkingTowardsBSN
My school is also very competitive, instructors are tough, the 1st semester the students were all in it for themselves. But I created a private members only FaceBook page for our nursing class-its a safe place to vent, ask dumb questions ect. If one of us finds a helpful website-we link on the page, you can create documents (study guides to share-everyone can add info to it so that 1 person isnt stuck doing all the work) If one of the instructors sends an e-mail it is posted there. It has brought our class closer together-we truly want everyone to be successful. Good luck !!! :)
I think one of the big flaws in RN ed is that it makes you apply"critical thinking" (I will spit in the eye of anyone who utters that term within 2' of me, I promise) BEFORE they have properly trained you to do so. I've had much training and work experience in science and engineering. First you read, then you cook. You never are expected to design machines before you've completed rather a lot of engineering study, and you're not expected to know the answers to CPA exam questions before you've had a chance to fully study accounting, are you? Nursing ed is nuts. It's nonsensical. It's a plate of tangled spaghetti. It might be true that the workplace conditions are everything tossed into the kitchen sink and you have to know how to sort it out, but the education for it should be very organized, systematic, principles and decision trees and flowcharts for the "process" and the critical-thinking decision-making process all laid out in a very organized manner. Easy to learn, in other words. After 1 year of RN school, I really and truly believe that my instructors might know nursing but had no earthly idea of how to teach it. I am sure that they didn't know how to adjust the curriculum to accommodate strengths and weaknesses and demographics of the current student body. There were at least 3 exams during the last term I was there that fully 75%-80% of the class failed. That's just poor, poor, quality control and a total lack of competence on the part of instructors, in my opinion.
I'm not going back to nursing school, that one or any other. There just are too many problems with it. And my personal issue is that I am a woman who isn't at all interested in motherhood or children, and that would no doubt be a major career impediment in a field with so many mommy-women and family people in it. I am past 50 and youthful and very energetic type A business and professional and technical. The public wants and expects a female nurse "to be a Florence Nightengale-esque mild-mannered hand holding bed making water-getting beacon of love and compassion," quoting MoJo, RN in her blog. I am goal-oriented and problem-solving oriented. After a year of RN school, I see why "they" say "the bright ones go to med school, not nursing." I don't think that's a comment on competence , but more of a comment on temperament and personality traits and personal goals vs. the power structure and job duties.
I quite enjoy my "care bear" school as well. Don't get me wrong, we have copious amounts of reading, endless assignments, and difficult testing, the program is competitive, and we have a great reputation - but they really do want ALL of us to graduate. Our professors and director are always willing to go the extra mile to help us if we're struggling, We only have about a 2% attrition rate due to grades and usually a 95% NCLEX pass rate, so I'd say they're doing something right!
As I sit here and read the responses for this topic, I think back to when I was in nursing school (2009-2011). I felt the same way. But now that I have some experience under my belt, you have no understanding of pressure. You may think that the nursing instructor staff is being unfair or extra mean, trust me that they are not. When you have a patient in front of you that is seconds from crashing you may then understand why your instructors were so hard on you. Please understand that you are, at best, receiving a BASIC nursing education. As far as 'critical thinking' goes, you use it all day, everyday! For the moment you clock in until you clock out, nurses are constantly asked to make difficult decisions.
Do yourselves a favor, sit back, shut up and learn!
I'm interested in the care bear schools, would someone let me in on it? I was in an RN program at a local community college, washed out in the 4th of 5 semesters- due to drill sergeant uncaring instructors that "eat their young" I am now in an Lpn program at another school, and they do the same. I didn't wash out of the RN program because I'm dumb, I can make a's in most any course outside of nursing with 0 studying at all! Where are these nurturing nursing schools? I am not opposed at all to working hard, I'm opposed to nursing instructors that think, " I can do it and have been where you are, you can do it to" and then telling you to go do a procedure you read in a book, having never seen it demoed or been officially taught it. Thought school was about being taught something, not just reading a book and being tested without being taught the theory behind something or being taught the application of the subject matter, and calling that critical thinking!
I've decided it is kind of a tradition to micromanage nursing students, it was worse in days past, but I still feel like I'm in a 3rd grade classroom some times. I was scolded in front of the class for sitting in a wheeled chair and rolling to the next table. No Rolling Allowed! Who knew? If you don't want rolling, why did you buy chairs with wheels on them?
I'm quite frustrated with my RN program at this point. How is giving us an exam that only 5 out of 40+ people passed at all helpful? My clinical group has 6 days of clinicals scheduled for this semester, and in all reality, we are only going to spend 3 of those 6 days actually seeing patients; the rest of the time is spent writing and/or presenting paper after paper after paper about taking care of patients, instead of actually taking care of patients. I fail to see the logic in any of this. The concept of overwhelming us with information is counter-productive; we aren't actually taking in everything we should be taking in. I'm an excellent student, and not at all afraid of hard work, but this is bordering on the ridiculous. Ok....end of rant. Good luck to everyone else struggling to beat this monster.
As I recall, it was a little hellish in nursing school-- Okay, very hellish, at times....both for my LPN and then, even more so with the RN schooling. I think, as one of my instructors said (paraphrasing), they have to start you with a broad base because you, as a nurse, are going to take short cuts and lose some of what you learned afterward. So, they sort of drill you and "over-teach" things...and they expect more than is what we think is possible or necessary....to make us better.
Not sure about the care bear school....but I believe most schools of nursing are tough, as you seem to be saying.
Ok what is this amazing "care bear" school? I'm going to start nursing school in te spring and am scared to death that I won't be able to handle the science and math. Up until about three months ago I never would have dreamed that I would want t become a nurse, but after a sternal bone marrow biopsy in Senegal, ALL, a Rhizopus infection in my chest and right knee, a stem cell transplant, two cardiac arrests in 24 hours, and then the realization that the nurses I had were a huge part of my survival through all that and more, I wanted to become one myself. I'm just nervous about the rigors of school. I have a BA in Anthroploogy but I swear, chemo brain is a real thing so that's where my concern lies. So I'm just asking for a little bit of help - what school are you folks in that you like so much? I need all the help I can get
loriangel14, RN
6,933 Posts
So you all think that we should be babied along and be given breaks at every turn? I disagree. We are dealing with people's lives here and we shouldn't be let off easy. Being an easy marker or letting mistakes go uncorrected may keep everyone happy but what kind of nurses will it make us?