It went from being “the worst” to being among the best

nursing

Last year, more than half of the nursing students at Harstad failed this subject Anatomy, physiology and biochemistry. This year’s results show significant progress.

– We worked in many different areas in parallel. It started by dividing the students into small groups as soon as they started their studies. Each group was given a contact tutor who the students were supposed to start with, says Trine Brun-Harberg. She is the Assistant Head of the Department of Nursing Education at UiT Arctic University Norway, Harstad Campus.

Harberg tells Khrono that results for nursing students in 2021 were very poor and it was realized that more action needed to be taken to lift students.

In 2021, 53.6 nursing students on the UiT campus in Harstad failed anatomy, physiology and biochemistry. This year, the repetition rate dropped to 16 percent, its lowest level since 2016, and it is now among the best places to study in the country.

– The idea here is that we’ve seen that students often take a while to get started. For many, the transition from high school is demanding. With us, they don’t have homework from day to day, you have to start reading and studying more on your own, and it’s very important for students to start from day one and not wait until the last two weeks before an exam, it continues.

One in four fails, on average

Nursing students are one of four groups of students who are tested in the National Partial Examination. Revision students teach students in mathematics and child care students in law, while nursing students are tested in anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry.

In 2016, approximately 22 percent of students failed. In 2021 and 2022, the number was more than 25 percent, for the 2022 cohort at 25.1 percent.

But 9.2 percent of students got an A in the fall exam, the highest ever.

“Many of those who take this exam come straight out of high school and are first-class students,” Kristin Finegy, director of Knockout, noted when the results were announced this week.

– The pandemic meant that these students had barely taken an exam before they took this one. The fact that many have mastered this very difficult test, which is something students can be proud of, Finney added, In a press release from Knockout.

Compulsory seminars and assignment groups

Harberg at UiT Harstad also says that the subject director for this subject, Jørn Hjellnes, followed the students closely, and a comprehensive scheme was drawn up, for many nursing students, in the subjects of anatomy, physiology and biochemistry.

Students were given sets of assignments related to the topics they worked on, and we followed them up with compulsory study days. Students who did not attend here had to submit written submissions to the course supervisor, Harberg says.

She also points out that the assignment sets are very comprehensive and that both the teaching and the assignments are squarely oriented towards seminars and are quality assured when it comes to the exam.

In total, the students had completed 10 mandatory school days, and Harberg believes that, combined with careful follow-up, and task groups targeting individual topics worked on, is much of the explanation for the fact that the failure rate has gone from 53 percent to 16 percent. Cent.

– So the focus was on repetition and we ran mock tests. Of course we will also follow up on this in the fall, but then we will also put in more simulations. Simulations give students an increased understanding of, for example, topics such as blood circulation and respiration, so that it’s not just fidgeting for students. Harberg says that greater understanding leads to better results.

Flexi bid successfully

Also in a completely different place in the country, more specifically at the University of South-East Norway (USN), success in the nursing exam has been achieved.

Program director Rita Li and Ösp Egilsdottir at USN say that in the fall of 2022 they are starting flexible nursing education with 50 study places reserved for applicants who live in the Telemark and Viken regions.

The aim is to enhance nursing skills that are much needed in the region. Flexible nursing education, “FleksiSykepleie” is perhaps the first in Norway to be organized continuously in all years of study according to a learning design Flipped classroom or flipped teaching, as they say.

She says the FlexiSykepleie course was initially set up for online teaching based on three weeks of fun learning paths containing webinars for various purposes.

Short webinars are formal and informal meeting places between teachers and students, where topics often touch on larger topics that are brought up in a longer topic webinar. After the topic webinar, learning activities that deepen the topic are planned with pre-selected learning groups. The range of digital learning resources is used to the highest degree, eg digital learning resources and the use of virtual patients, Lee explains, then for success:

– On the subject of science, we chose, then, not to give a single lecture, but to focus on active learning, anatomical camps, and careful synthesis of the content of the learning paths. So it was very excited to await the results of the National Micro Examination in Anatomy, Physiology and Biochemistry. Our student failure rate was 14 percent, which means we are right at the top nationally.

This is very interesting, Li and Egilsdottir add, because results have traditionally been low average scores for part-time or online studies on this exam.