A student gave a heartfelt cry on Tuesday after failing the nursing admissions exam for the third time. Not having the means to try again, she announces that she is ending her dream of becoming a nurse.
What there is to know
- Nearly half of nursing students taking the entry-to-practice exam for the first time in September and March failed.
- The commissioner for admission to professions, Mr.e André Gariépy, revealed last week to have noted several flaws in the examination. In response to these findings, the OIIQ announced that it would replace its exam as early as 2024.
- Students distraught over failing the exam testified at The Press. One of them will put an end to her dream of becoming a nurse.
“Today, I say goodbye to the dream of being a community nurse, a women’s health nurse, a school nurse, a nurse in aboriginal communities and so on. Today I say ‟bye” to my dream profession”, testified Clémence Fortin in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
The young woman failed the entrance exam to the nursing profession held last March, like hundreds of other students. “I could do the exam a fourth and last time, but I don’t have the mental strength, the energy and the money that this whole exam process generates,” she wrote in her post.
The exam registration fee is $638.11 per attempt. “So in my case it’s $1914.33 in 1 year. Not to mention the applications or the tutoring that we pay to study the exam or the books during the school career,” she told The Press.
Low success rate
The examination of the Order of Nurses of Quebec (OIIQ) again recorded a disproportionate failure rate during its last edition, last March, it was announced on Monday.
The pass rate for the March exam for first-time candidates was 53.3%, while that for graduates outside of Canada was 37%. This low pass rate is reminiscent of the September exam, where only 51.4% of candidates achieved a passing grade.
In November, the commissioner for admission to professions, Me André Gariépy, was responsible for investigating the reasons that led to this abnormally high failure rate. He revealed last week that the College’s exam was flawed and he questions the quality of the questions and raised pass marks without sufficient justification.
Following his observations, the Commissioner invited the Order to question the relevance and usefulness of an exam, to improve its exam or to consider using another exam relevant to the nursing profession.
By agreeing that certain elements of the current exam needed to be improved, the OIIQ announced Thursday that it would replace its admission exam in 2024 with the NCLEX-RN exam, used in the other Canadian provinces and in the United States. . The exam scheduled for September 2023 will, however, retain its current form.
“Make a difference”
The student, Clémence Fortin, wonders about the relevance of this admission exam. “Doing three years of DEC, internships and a comprehensive end-of-course exam, why isn’t that enough? Why leave a multiple-choice exam [déterminer] who is or is not a good nurse? she asks herself. The exam, which consists of around 100 multiple-choice questions, lasts an entire day. It takes place twice a year, in September and March.
The young woman loves the profession for which she studied. During the pandemic, she participated for almost two years in the vaccination campaign against COVID-19, “to help the population and the health system”, she says, in addition to having a second job.
“For me, the nursing profession is more than helping others, it was for me a profession in which I could make a difference. I wanted to make a difference, to make people see that despite the somewhat defective health system, there are human people who work there and are there for them, ”she says.
Distraught students
Other students testified to The Press the despair they felt when they learned on Monday that they had failed the March exam. “My world collapsed, because I knew full well that I deserved to pass it”, confided one of them.
The student completed her nursing technique in May 2022, having passed all her internships and exams. “I passed with flying colors a program summary exam at the end of my DEC, which encompassed everything I had learned during my career as a nursing student,” she adds. She is now studying for a bachelor’s degree in nursing and obtains marks between 80 and 85%.
By September 2022, she had scored 54%, or 1 percentage point below the passing mark. In the March exam, the same scenario happened. “I am once again 1 point away from passing the most important exam of my life. I was so close. I am devastated, as are other colleagues who have once again failed this exam. »