Nursing exams failure rate…Need for aptitude test for potential students, better trained tutors being touted

Mar 17, 2017 News

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Although there is enough evidence to suggest that the reasoning ability of many local nursing students is wanting, there is also sufficient evidence to deduce that they are not the only ones to be blamed for unsatisfactory results

that have been forthcoming at the examinations they are required to write.
At least this is the conviction of a senior governmental functionary who has close ties to the Ministry of Public Health. It is the belief of the official that close attention must also be directed to those tasked with preparing the nursing students for their intended forte.
In fact, it is the belief of the official that several shortcomings lending to an alarming failure rate, even at the nursing schools, might be very evident from the level of the education system. “Something seems to be very wrong with the education system that is preparing these people in the first instance,” said the official, who based this deduction on the fact that although several of the students who are accepted in the professional nurses’ programme have several subjects, “it would seem that they do not have the aptitude to understand some concepts and do not have basic knowledge.”
An example of this was the fact that several aspiring nurses did not even know who the Minister of Public Health was.
This publication was reliably informed that persons seeking to undertake Professional Nurses programme are required to have at least five CXC passes inclusive of Mathematics, English Language and a Science subject.
Moreover, the official is convinced that there is a dire need for moves to be introduced to have applicants for the nursing programme to undergo an aptitude test, followed by an orientation session, before they are accepted for training in the field of nursing.
But there are other factors to be taken into consideration when it comes to the nursing programme. Among these, the official said, is that there are not nearly enough suitably qualified people in the system to deliver nursing education.
“You don’t have sufficient people who have training in education and some of them may not have the sufficient content to teach,” said the official, who added “there is an assumption that once you are trained as a nurse and you have the right attitude you can make a good teacher, but this really isn’t the case…teaching is art and science.”
This publication understands that the Ministry of Public Health has recognised the quality of teachers in the system as a shortcoming and has been investing in this regard in order to have people better trained.
Reports reaching this publication are that the Ministry, through its training arm, is currently collaborating with the University of Miami in order to engage measures to train local persons in the basics of nursing education. This move, this publication has learnt, has been channelled through the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) which has been working in close collaboration with the Ministry of Public Health.
The basics of this training entail the promotion of a dual mode of education delivery – face to face and distant education. In fact, there are reports that 26 individuals graduated from this programme in November of last year with laudable results.
The notion of investing in education has been emphasised by another official with a keen interest in nursing education.
“You have got to continue to invest in the training of tutors and education. Additionally, you have to pay attention to who leads the schools, because principals and senior tutors…they have to be able to carry out a critical part of their function which includes supervising the teaching process,” according to the official.
The official pointed out too that “if you don’t have enough tutors and the principals have to pay attention to carrying courses themselves, they are not going to be able to supervise the teaching process. Added to this, if you are going to supervise people, you are going to have to be at a level higher than them.”
It is for this reason, this publication was told, that the Public Health Ministry has embraced an initiative that will see some 13 individuals being sent to Brazil in September for training at the Doctorate and Masters’ level. Reports are that this move comes as part of an agreement between the Public Health Ministry and the PAHO.
“The focus is to train people from the schools and also pay attention to the hospitals, because that’s also part of where you have a weakness,” the official revealed.
According to the official, if there are not sufficient personnel in place to supervise the work of the nursing students, the result could be sustained unsatisfactory performances at the nurses’ examinations. Nursing students are required to spend a great deal of time under clinical supervision in the hospital setting.
This publication was reliably informed that despite the need for this level of supervision, “the previous government refused to accept a recommendation to train clinical instructors to be a part of the nursing programme faculty. Their [clinical supervisors] job is when students are in the hospital setting to give clinical guidance, but the people doing that are too few, and they also have full-time jobs and therefore cannot be effective.”
Added to this, the official revealed that “…a lot of the very experienced people are not around. In the olden days you use to have people who are ward managers and so forth, involved in some of the teaching, because the number of students used to be far less, but the previous government had made the argument that there was no need for clinical instructors, and that the people on the ward needed to help teach so they refused to implement that initiative”.
However, this publication was informed that the current government has not only recognised the need to employ more qualified instructors, but also to ensure instructors students ratio is suitable, in the quest to help address the alarming failure rate at the nurses’ examination.
In order to realise the needed change, moves to employ Clinical Coordinator are on the horizon, even as efforts are made to develop a course for clinical instructors.
“Fixing the problem doesn’t meant that we have to only look at the students, but we have to have faculties whose job is to look at students in clinical practice…the support of clinical instructors is very important. They [nursing students] spend more time there [in the hospital setting] than they spend in classrooms,” the official explained.
According to the official, “failure is not failure just in the classroom, but the teaching institutions themselves…we have got to look at the shortcomings at all of the levels before we can begin to see a real change in the nursing students’ performances,” said the official.
Remarks about the need to address the shortcomings in the training of nurses comes on the heels of alarming performances of nursing students who were required to re-sit the 2016 Professional Nurses State Final Examination.
According to information that this publication was privy to, a mere 23 students gained overall passes of the 179 candidates who participated in the examination last month. The re-sit was warranted after there were reports of a leak of the original examination which was administered in October of last year.
The candidates who participated in the examination were drawn from the four national nursing schools: Georgetown School of Nursing, New Amsterdam School of Nursing, Charles Roza School of Nursing and the St. Joseph Mercy Hospital.

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