Our last exam

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is our last final exam for this semester!!!! We are so relieved for this semester to be over. There are only 50 questions on this exam, so most of us are planning on being finished in about 30 minutes or so. Then it is off to a local Mexican restaurant for lunch and many, many margaritas.

I have to say that, on the whole, our exams have been mostly fair. Our first two were difficult, but most of us expected that. One class was just plain impossible to study for and no one does well on the tests. One of those where you just have to be able to think like the instructor to pick the correct answer. It had questions like, "The proper nursing intervention that would show caring and cultural competence would be...." and then it lists 4 choices that could be correct in any given situation. You have to pick the "bestest" according to the instructor. Another example, "Your patient asks you to stay and pray with her. What would be the best intervention?" There were two obviously wrong choices and the other two were "close the door for privacy and pray with your patient" or "call for an chaplain or spiritual leader to pray with your patient." Well, depending on your personal preference for praying, you might do one or the other. If you are comfortable praying and it is within your personal beliefs and practices, then hey, go ahead and pray. But, if praying is not something you are comfortable with or is not part of your personal beliefs, then it would be appropriate to do a spiritual consult for your patient. So which answer is right????
Our test on Friday that I complained about studying for in the last post was horrible. 125 questions. I finished in about an hour. Apparently the class average was 79%. That is pretty bad for us. It was so bad that the "course coordinator" posted the grades, got so many complaints about them that she took the grades down and is "re-evaluating her scores". Read that to mean there is going to be a curve! Now, don't worry, this class really had nothing to do with the life and death of our patients. Us not doing well will have absolutely NO effet on our ability to provide competent nursing care.

So, most of us survived and will return in January to start this all over again! I will try to post one more time before we go on break, but in case I don't have Happy Holidays!