Northern Kentucky University

Date: Mar 17 2009
Major: Nursing (This Major's Salary over time)
As far as the graduate nursing program (Family Practice Nurse Practitioner), I must say that I am very dissatisfied. I was not successful in the Peds course. The Peds instructor was absolutely rigid in her assignments and she ruled with an iron fist. She was also difficult to talk with. When I did fairly poorly on the first test I called to ask her advice to improve my scores in her class and her advice was to

work in a pediatric unit to gain peds experience

Since we were already 4 weeks into an 8 week course, I found this advice to be ludicrous because it takes years to gain proficiency in a given field or specialty and your level of expertise is directly driven by the type of paitents you happen to encounter. The 8 week course covered the same amount of material in a 16 week course with only 2 grading opportunities. This puts the student at a distinct disadvantage. When I complained to the university administration after having failed the course, I was told that the instructors are given the opportunity to run the course and the grading opportunities any way they choose.

The instructor told me the reason I failed the course was tht I had an inability to "synthesize" the material I was reading. This does not make sense to me since I have easily passed all of the other patient management courses (where syntehsizing a massive amount of material is also required).