I would like to share with you some of my experiences of discrimination, abuse and persecution while I was a nursing student at the University of Northern British Columbia.
On
January 13, 2010, in one of our clinical practicum placements, Sarah Hanson, my
instructor for NURS 315 (mental health nursing - practicum) told me to leave
the nursing program and forget about becoming a registered nurse because I was
an English Second Language student and a single mother, and she was going to
fail me. This threat was Sarah
Hanson’s
response to me after I informed her about my inability to log into the mental health
computer training system for NURS 315 at the hospital. As it turned out, it was not
my fault that I could not log in: someone had misspelled one letter in my name. But
Sarah Hanson would not admit that she had been wrong to blame me. Instead, she failed me. I protested,
but her action was supported by the lead instructor for that course (Lyle Grant)
and by the Chair of UNBC’s School of Nursing, Martha MacLeod. As punishment for arguing about their decision to fail me, Lyle Grant
created a special learning contract for NURS 315 and together with Sarah Hanson
forced me (by threats during my clinical practicum at
Northern Health's facility) into the “learning contract” which included making
me do a module (mini-course) on “communications skills” as one of its
requirements and which was not part of this
nursing program. They also distributed their negative
views about me to my other nursing instructors, my other clinical practicum
placements, and my classmates. They even tried to persuade some nursing
instructors in my other nursing courses to fail me.
Repeatedly
at UNBC I experienced aggressive and hostile behavior
towards me. This included swearing, yelling at me, and calling me (in a UNBC classroom) a "fucking
English second language student." Repeatedly I was shown the middle finger
and threatened. I also received abusive
or offensive phone calls at my home. Those who perpetrated the abuse have
now become registered nurses, while UNBC faculty members stood aside and
allowed this mistreatment to happen.
I retook NURS 315 in the fall of 2010 under a different instructor
and passed. I also passed all my other courses until I got to my final
practicum, NURS 440 (community health nursing), which I took from February to
April 2012. In fact, I was one of the best students in the nursing
program and received some of the highest marks. However, sometime before
the start of NURS 440, Martha MacLeod sent my file -- containing records of my
clash with Sarah Hanson and Lyle Grant in NURS 315 -- to my instructor for NURS
440, Khaldoun Aldiabat, a new faculty member lacking job security and with very
little experience of registered nursing in Canada. Initially Khaldoun
Aldiabat passed me on my midterm evaluation, but when I returned it to him
because he had forgotten to put my surname and satisfactory completion of all
assignments on it, he changed my grade to failure, and demanded that I redo the
same communications module which Sarah and Lyle had used to punish, humiliate
and fail me two years earlier. When I refused, Khaldoun Aldiabat failed
me on my final evaluation, even though the registered nurses who had actually
overseen my NURS 440 practicum had all graded my performance as satisfactory. In
addition, Khaldoun Aldiabat accused me of having complained to UNBC faculty
about his poor teaching. (The complaint had actually been made by another
student to Martha MacLeod.) Alone among
my classmates, I was subjected to an oral final exam of nearly two hours at
Northern Health's facility. All the rest of Khaldoun Aldiabat’s students
had their evaluation done by electronic submission of documents. (In all
other nursing clinical practicum courses, when face to face evaluation was
done, it only lasted 15-20 minutes, not for two hours as happened in my case.)
Khaldoun never came to watch me or any other nursing student on our
practicum. After the due date of our midterm grades, Khaldoun
Aldiabat began changing his expectations for our assignments and failing almost
everything I submitted to him. Khaldoun Aldiabat also warned the nurses
who were overseeing my work that I was a special case and asked them to report
to him more thoroughly about me than any of the other nursing students and
pressured them. He was rude, aggressive, and displayed his problems with anger
management.
In 2010 and 2012 I complained to UNBC’s student
union, ombudsperson, Chair of UNBC’s Undergraduate Nursing
Program (Lela Zimmer), Chair of UNBC’s Nursing Program
(Martha MacLeod), UNBC's Dean (John Young), UNBC's Senate, and
the president of UNBC (George Iwama), but they all
ignored me. Moreover, the dean responsible for UNBC’s nursing
program admitted to me that I was not the first student left without a degree
at the end of UNBC’s program. Only those UNBC nursing students facing failure
who were able to hire a lawyer have been able to gain at least partial redress
for their grievances; but I cannot afford a lawyer. And recently (in
2011), UNBC prohibited its students from having legal representation during the
appeal process. In 2012, even before I submitted my documents for the appeal of my
failing grade in NURS 440, I was informed that they would fail me.
Each year UNBC fails one or two nursing
students (out of approximately 100 in this collaborative nursing
program) just before graduation. Most of the graduates complete this
program with grades well below mine. Some have only a C in their theory
courses and a bare Pass in their clinical courses. Moreover, UNBC’s nursing program requires 136
credits to graduate, while Kwantlen’s
only demands 125.5 for the same nursing degree.
Failure in this course, NURS 440, meant that I could not graduate with
my Bachelor of Science in Nursing and therefore could not write my Registered
Nurse exam and receive my license allowing me to work as a registered
nurse. In turn, that caused me to lose the registered nurse job I had
been promised.
Note
how UNBC waited until the end of my nursing training program to fail me in the
last course, thereby maximizing their revenue, the bank’s profit, and my student debt. UNBC left me without the means of repaying my huge
student debt or of supporting myself and my child.
Yes,
Legal Aid and pro bono legal services exist, but they cannot help me. According to a lawyer,
mine is a human rights case, but Legal Aid only assists low income people for
family, criminal, and immigration matters and that kind of help is
limited. They will not provide legal aid to me in my situation. Almost all pro bono lawyers or student
lawyers provide their services only to low income people who live in Vancouver
or Victoria. Moreover, pro bono lawyers
only give advice and do not provide representation in court. And without legal representation, I am unable
to defend my rights against UNBC and receive my registered nurse degree.
The BC provincial government bears a share of the
responsibility for this injustice. It granted a privilege to universities which
allowed chairs of nursing schools to fail students for “personal unsuitability.” But this can rarely if ever be objectively
distinguished from personal dislike of a nursing student. Should not personal suitability be an employer’s judgment call -- even more so
when many nursing faculty members do not share the chair’s jaundiced view?
Thank you,
Tetyana M.
Please help me get my nursing degree from UNBC, so I can find a job, pay back my student debt, and support myself and my child.
You can sign my petition by clicking here.
Thank you for your support, and please pass this petition on to others to sign.
