We are writing to youbecause we are concerned aboutour careers as future nurses. In order to make it this far, we had to be relentless, exceptional nursing students. The grades we are receiving on our Med-Surg exams and quizzes are not indicative of our true understanding of the material. And our grades are not reflective of our true aptitude. Our grades do not reflect our ability to learn and apply concepts. We read the textbook and absorb the information given in lecture; however, our exam questions are rarely reflective of the concepts discussed in lecture and read in the textbook. In addition to attending and paying attention to class lectures, many of us have purchased a plethora of ancillary reading and studying material.

Gratitude

We appreciate our professors, along with the time and effort that they have put into helping us to correct the current issues. Some of us have voiced our concerns to Dr. Carr and we appreciate that she has agreed to meet with us at least once a week for 1 hr and review questions from our personal resources. While our current professors are notable beings who mean well: the lectures and exams are failing us.

Grievances

Our testing materials (1 exam and 2 quizzes)include subjective data that isunclear and open to interpretation.The types of test questions we have to answer as nurses need more thorough vetting because it is not sufficient for a few professors to write questions.

Our testing materialsincludequestions thatare not in our assigned reading and that have not been discussed in class.

Many of us are not receiving adequate exposure in clinical. For the first three clinicals, we were not allowed on the floor. Some sections are still not allowed on the floor and are doing simulations in lab. Then we are tested on material we should have learned in clinicals but we were not exposed to the cases as we should have been.

Many of us are using the class lectures with our textbook as a guide for our studying, however some of the information provided in class deviates from the information in our textbook leading to much confusion during our exams.

We were given a quiz then an exam without being able to review the quiz; therefore, we were unable to correct our previous mistakes.Much of our learning occurs after testing or right before we take the exams.

Concerns:

We are all concerned about our future in this program and would like to take all the necessary steps to graduate. We would like to have a fair chance to recover from our current situation, and succeed in completing this program as we are all excited to be the BEST nurses in our field.

Humble requests:

Exam and quiz questions that are: empirically objective and based solely on the assigned readings and lectures.

3 Make-up/extra credit assignments that can provide recovery for the exams/quizzes that we have taken, which have not properly measured our understanding and ability to apply the concepts we have learned in lecture. The majority of us are averaging a 60-65% and even if there are changes made going forward, we will need interventions for each of our previous failing scores in order to successfully pass the course. If the proper interventions are not put into place as soon as possible, the majority of us will fail.

The use of extra class time to practice reviewing and answering the types of questions that will appear on our quizzes/exams.

Use of additional class time to discuss rationales, nursing implications, and priorities we as nurses should be implementing, when confronted with patient scenarios.

Working on practice questions during class time, and using the lecture book as reference are two possible solutions that may enhance our proficiency, but most importantly we want our professors to understand the necessity of these changes for us to complete this program.