The Boat is Sinking!

This morning my teacher (during NCM *Nursing Care Management*) said that only 20% of the board exam takers last December 2006 passed. 20% is a very alarming rate. That means if there were 100 who took the board exam, only 20 passed. Accordingly, the Nursing Licensure Exam last December 2006 was very objective compared to the previous ones which were very focused on application (nursing procedures).

My teacher further said that they asked their students last year to take an exam on nursing procedures. The result was a shocker. Only 2 out of the 50 randomly chosen participants passed.

She then went on encouraging us to help the college of Nursing at our school by giving advice as to how they can improve the quality of the nursing education they are imparting.

Being a nursing student myself, I can cite many weak links on the whole system.

First of all, some clinical instructors are not performing well. Some would not even ask us to do anything. They would stay at the nurse's station and leave us at the conference room. Of course, being the students that we are, we don't complain. Then there are these instructors who claim that they weren't oriented as to what they were supposed to do. Apparently, the only instruction they got was to bring the students to the community. They had no idea about requirements, rules, etc.

Then there are these classroom instructors who don't seem to know how to properly evaluate the students. Just this morning, we had an exam. In that particular exam which was about Diabetis Milletus in Pregnancy, the first question was: When was (artificial) Insulin discovered? Now what is wrong with this question? Well for one thing, I won't be needing to know when insulin was discovered when I'm giving it to my patients.

Then I remember last June when we were shown how to do IV insertion, and anything involving the IV. What was supposed to be a return demonstration turned out to be a memory test. Apparently we were tested if we could memorize the whole procedure. Some instructors didn't even ask us to do the actual demonstration anymore. We just stood there and recited all the steps.

This type of evaluation is the reason why the other students see nursing as a course wherein memorization is the only skill needed (if you could even call it a skill).

Another thing that plagues the college of Nursing at our school is corruption (I'm not sure about this). I, as the treasurer of the class back in my second year in college was supposed to sell tickets to a concert (which everyone was required to buy). As it turns out, there was no one collecting the tickets at the entrance to the gym. Some people who chose not to pay for the tickets yet decided not to pay anymore after discovering this. Now here's the shocker. Some people opted to pay for the ticket even before the concert so I was holding 300+ php. A year after, the cash is still with me and nobody is bothering to collect it. So this incident makes me very suspicious. Was that concert just another one of the college's "extra curricular activities"?

Then there was also this incident that occurred at the Acquaintance party of the college of nursing. The people at the entrance of the convention center were asking for 10 pesos for a raffle ticket ( the stab didn't look official, just a cartolina with some info written on it). They said a cellphone was at stake. After the announcement was made on who won the cellphone, the emcees thanked Smart who apparently sponsored that phone. Again these are mere suspicions.

Then there's the morale of the students to talk about. Last semester, there were three or four student who I was pretty sure were going to fail. I'm not underestimating them or anything. These people didn't attend classes and RLE (duty) so I thought they would be gone next semester. But come November, they were still there. Weeks later, I learned that there were many who failed NCM that semester and were given a 'second chance'. I was furious when I heard that. Not that I'm being self centered, but it was very unfair.

The last but not the least problem facing the college of nursing is the fact that all if not most of the students today were forced by their parents to take up the course. Nursing is a noble job, everyone says. It is a job which you either love or hate. There is no learning how to love nursing. That is what everyone (parents) fail to understand. Nursing is not supposed to be about memorizing every word in that thick book. It is supposed to be about being solely passionate for the work it entails and everything (all the terms, procedures, drugs, etc.) would be easier to remember. This one I keep on reiterating to my parents: There is no such job which is not in demand. There is no such course that would not land you a job. It's all about whether you are interested in that particular subject or not. It's all about whether you are passionate enough about that work. How can anyone say that psychiatrists are not in demand when there are around 5 billion people in this planet? How can anyone say that a writer is not in demand when there are so many publications in the world. It really all boils down on one thing: Passion.

My advice to all people thinking of taking up nursing, DON'T. The boat is sinking. It is sad to see that today's youth is totally crippled by poverty. In this time when people are supposed to know better, it is amazing how so many are being lead to the bottomless pit of worldly desires.

A famous person once said that he hopes that all people would experience being extremely rich so that they would know it is not the answer.

Parents are supposed to know better. The youth should be more vocal and discriminating.

So why the bloody hell, are we still taking up Nursing?