They spoiled me and now I'm freaking out !

BabyLady, BSN, RN · May 30, 2009

So now I'm in my last nursing course and ofcourse at the beggining of each course we have a drug calc exam. So no biggie right ? You study you pass. So I studied and then I get to the exam and to my surprise it was not multiple choice like the rest of the drug calc exams. I was petrified ! Not only was there no answers starring me in the face we had to also get an 85 instead of an 80 to pass. To top everything off instead of finding out that night whether we pass or fail we won't find out until Monday and we tested on Thur. This was a double whammy. Well I did my best I just hope and pray I passed. I'm sorry for complaining. I just don't like to be spoiled and then brought back to reality in such a harsh way. I'm used to multiple choice, having to get an 80 or better to pass, and finding out the same night. Don't spoil us and then change the rules on us later. But thats nursing school for ya and to be honest there is no other place I'd rather be. :loveya: Wish me luck guys. I'll find out monday. It still won't keep me from checking grades q 5min though.

Consider yourself lucky...in my program, our answers were never multiple choice, because in nursing practice, you don't really get multiple choice answers when calculating drugs and our pass requirement was 95%.

If you didn't get 95%, you got to retake the test two more times, if you couldn't pass it, you were out of the program.

I never studied for it, because it was about practice...we had a medical calculations course we had to take and our instructor warned us that no matter how simple the homework seemed, if you didn't do it according to the formulas and if you didn't do it consistently....by the end of the course you were going to be in serious trouble.

It was the easiest class I ever took....however, the ones that failed, were always the ones that didn't do the homework.

tbell2 · May 30, 2009

That blows. It can throw you through a loop when you go in expecting one thing and encounter another. Ours aren't multiple choice (except the ones they throw in on regular exams) but we need the same pass %

We get to use simple calculators, but I have a 4 year old with a tendency to take things that she thinks look interesting from my purse.... so I have done many by hand. I have always been good at math (Dad's a math teacher which helped) so I don't sweat them. In pharmacology I actually had to correct the teacher after our class. She figured my grade wrong! It took me a while to notice, but when I was looking at my grades online I saw I had a C, which I knew was wrong. I did the math over and over and kept getting the same thing. When I went to her office I could tell she didn't think she had miscalculated anything, like "Oh, OK. Well, let's just see." So she did the math and changed her tune fast. She was also my med-surg 1 teacher, the best one in our program so far!!

melmarie23, MSN, RN · May 30, 2009

I am sure you did fine. You had to know the steps to find out the right multiple choice answer, you know? This time you just had to show those steps.

Let us know how you did!

NurseLoveJoy88, ASN, RN · May 30, 2009

Hmmm. On the floor, when dispensing meds to patients, I've never seen a multiple choice answer area. You have to find out the answer for yourself !
Oh, and you might also try accepting responsibility for yourself. Blaming someone else for spoiling you is a poor substitute for accepting that you weren't as well practiced as you might have been. Just practice some exercises each day, and working these problems will become second nature and also EASY. Just spend 10 min. a day working problems. It will so pay off for you....
best of luck!
Jane:smiletea2:

Yes maam ! I here ya. Don't get me wrong I do take responsibility for my self and I'm not blaming anyone. I do consider them spoiling us based on some of the other posts. Well I did my pratice problems and I studied so now I just have to wait it out for the results. And you are right... when I'm a nurse I won't have multiple choice answers so I'm glad I finally had a drug calc that WAS NOT M.C. You made some good points Jane ! Thanks.

NurseLoveJoy88, ASN, RN · May 30, 2009

That blows. It can throw you through a loop when you go in expecting one thing and encounter another. Ours aren't multiple choice (except the ones they throw in on regular exams) but we need the same pass %
We get to use simple calculators, but I have a 4 year old with a tendency to take things that she thinks look interesting from my purse.... so I have done many by hand. I have always been good at math (Dad's a math teacher which helped) so I don't sweat them. In pharmacology I actually had to correct the teacher after our class. She figured my grade wrong! It took me a while to notice, but when I was looking at my grades online I saw I had a C, which I knew was wrong. I did the math over and over and kept getting the same thing. When I went to her office I could tell she didn't think she had miscalculated anything, like "Oh, OK. Well, let's just see." So she did the math and changed her tune fast. She was also my med-surg 1 teacher, the best one in our program so far!!

Wow you get to use your own calcs ? Now thats something that they don't let us do, we have to use their cheap dollar store calculators. I love my ti-83 because I can do the whole problem in one step.

tbell2 · May 30, 2009

Wow you get to use your own calcs ? Now thats something that they don't let us do, we have to use their cheap dollar store calculators. I love my ti-83 because I can do the whole problem in one step.

We can use anything without a memory feature. No cell phones. Just basic addition, subtraction, multiplicaion, and division.

llg, PhD, RN · May 30, 2009

This is an interesting thread for me to read as I ocassionally administer medication tests to students and new grads in my work as a staff development educator. Our standard test is a multiple choice test and the students/new grads are often thrilled at that. A big smile comes over their face when they first see it.

However, the second half of the test (also multiple choice) is not calculations. It is about the uses, side effects, etc. of some common medications and questions about how you would administer them to children of different ages. (They receive a handout and a lecture on everything on the test a few days prior to having to take the test.) When they reach those questions, you can see their moods change as they take it. When we grade the test, many get extremely high scores on the first half and then do really horribly on the last half. Several have commented that their schools don't teach that kind of stuff and they have never been tested on the meds themselves or on how to give them ... just the calculations.

So, I'm curious. How many of your schools test you on the uses, side effects, etc. and administration of the most common medication? Are your tests only calculations or are you also tested on other aspects of the medication administration?

melmarie23, MSN, RN · May 30, 2009

Our Pharmacology class tested on the route, action, class and side effects of the medications. We had our dosage calculation tests were in our Fundamentals class and in clinical we would get practice problems to do as well (that also incorporated route, action, class, and side effects) as well as the dosage calculations.

RNDreamer · May 30, 2009

Our dos calc exams are mostly calculations, nothing about the meds themselves. However, our class exams have medication questions on them.

So, I'm curious. How many of your schools test you on the uses, side effects, etc. and administration of the most common medication? Are your tests only calculations or are you also tested on other aspects of the medication administration?

cursedandblessed · May 30, 2009

So, I'm curious. How many of your schools test you on the uses, side effects, etc. and administration of the most common medication? Are your tests only calculations or are you also tested on other aspects of the medication administration?

In calculations class it's just calculations. Our pharmacology class wasn't very difficult the 5/6 rights, anaphylaxis, common antibiotics: relationship between a reaction to penicillin and possibility of a reactionCephalosporins, pain meds/pain scale, digoxin (they went over digoxin every single class for some reason-apical pulse full minute before administering), NSAIDS GI upset, Tylenol no more than 4000 mgQday R/T liver damage, for alcoholics off the top of my head I'm thinking 3200 mg., diuretics checking k+ b4 administering. Other drugs we learn as we're going over the body systems in med-surg. Statins- rhabydomyolosis(I can't spell the word, sorry-muscle wasting) all cholesterol drugs GI upset.

Insulins, anti-histamines sedating in earlier ones (benadryl), nitrates-no viagra/cialis, Ace inhibitor-cough, coumadin/heparin/lovenox-risk for bleeding, BP and pulse rate b4 all antihypertensives.

That's all I can think of right now, but is that what you're talking about needing to know?

llg, PhD, RN · May 30, 2009

Our pharmacology class wasn't very difficult .....
That's all I can think of right now, but is that what you're talking about needing to know?

I notice the guidelines you gave were all for adults. No pediatrics ... not much about how you would actually give the med ... what you would do in a real-life situation if something didn't seem right ... etc. There was a recent thread here on allnurses about a question (asked by a hospital as part of the interview process) that asked the candidate what she would do if she calculated a dose of some drug to be 40 pills. The new grad was not she answered the question correctly. It was funny to read the comments in that thread. Many of the students made it all very complicated and twisted the question into many different shapes as they struggled to answer it. The experienced nurses all thought the question was easy -- they would do their calculations over again to double-check their work because they probably had made a mistake in their original calculations!

It's beginning to seem to me that schools are failing to teach students how to actually give meds in real life -- perhaps not focusing on that enough in their clinical rotations. I know many of the students who come to my hospital don't give many meds because the instructors are spread too thin to adequately supervise them and hesitate to delegate that teaching task to the staff nurses.

Hmmmm .... interesting

vmoh18 · May 30, 2009

Our Pharmacology class was mostly centered around adults. The instructors told us would learn the Peds meds in maternal/child.