Priority Questions Level of Difficulty is the Passing Mark?

Priority and delegation tend to be higher level questions because (for the most part) it assumes by a certain point that you have enough knowledge to answer them. Of course, you have to get them right, not just get them ?

As far as WHEN you get them, doesn't really matter. You will have 15 pilot questions that are thrown out throughout the first 75 questions of your exam, so they will "throw off" any sort of "order' you may be looking for.

When these questions show up isn't an indication of anything. Some pilot questions may well fall into the "easier" category and be sprinkled in between some of the "harder" ones.

Triage questions are, essentially, priority questions. Don't read too much into it ?

You are correct in that it is based on logic and reason. You are incorrect in your assessment of what that logic and reason is, for the reasons I gave you in my response.

Just because something is based on logic and reason does NOT mean that it's very amenable to analysis from the NCLEX candidates themselves. In other words, the correct assessment (as she said) is that you can't pin things down easily because there are too many unknowns.

You can stress yourself in the exam trying to out guess the machine!

When I got my first priority question on my test I almost stood up & cheered because I'd heard they were on the harder line.

I nearly forgot to breath when trying to answer the 1st infection control one!

Then suddenly it dropped to an easier med question & I got that horrible sinking sensation, you know where it feels like all the blood is draining from your face. I tohught I must have answered the precious prioty/infection control questions wrong. Then it bounced straight up to a "who would you call first" that was REALLY hard (I guess now that the easier question was a test one.) After that I decided to forget the type of question being asked & stopped trying to guess where I was. I just answered each one that came along to the best of my ability. Luckily that was enough because I passed.

A hard priority question for you might be an easy one for the majority, you just don't know. So don't try & second guess the exam, take each question as it comes & try your very best to get it correct!

Actually, I am not trying to second guess the exam and I am not convincing everyone here to do that during the actual exam. The important thing here is that we should be able to understand how the machine works and at what level of difficulty a priority question might be.

Knowing this would help us prepare for the exam. For example if we know that priority questions are at difficulty level near the passing mark, then during our review, we must be able to achieve atleast 65% correct on all practice priority questions before we sit for NCLEX. That way, we know if we are ready or not and not just putting our $200 down the drain.

I understand your desire to know this, really I do. The reasons you gave make perfect sense. HOWEVER, what we have been trying to tell you is that there is no "type" of question that really gives you a great indication of whether you are failing, near passing, slightly above passing, way above passing. You CANNOT tell. The overall thinking (and mine, too, up until recently) was that priority, delegation, infection control were higher level questions.

Reality kicked in. People reported that they had LOTS and LOTS of those questions--and yet failed. Obviously, the harder ones they got wrong, the easier ones (right or wrongly answered) were below the level of passing.

Triage questions, as you keep asking, are priority questions (what is your priority in this situation). Don't get hung up on symantics. Priority questions can be rather easy and will NOT PASS YOU no matter how many "below standard" ones you get.

I see you have many threads and questions on this subject; my best suggestion would be to read through them, read the facts from the Board itself, and then you'll know where your thinking is correct and where it's faulty.

Best of luck to you.

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I know that TRIAGE is a priority question; but what level of priority question? easy? difficult? or maybe both?

As I have said a number of times now (with support of others), it is NOT that you can determine how difficult a question is by the TYPE. For instance, you can have a triage question that taxes your brain, has alot of components, and people with very similar severity, such that you have to really work at the correct answer. A difficult question. Or, you can have a triage question that places two of the four people in no danger at all, one person has a UTI, and the last person is bleeding out from a cut artery. Get it? Easy.

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Why we were not given a lot of pharma questions rather then priority questions? Is there a reason?

Everyone has a different mix. I've seen people get one or two med questions in 75 questions, others get 12. Both passed. I've seen people get not many in the whole 265, and others get alot. Both failed. Do you see where I'm going here? A pharm question is just that: a question. Could be easy to answer or hard.

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I am not trying to convince everyone here.

*I* got alot of pharm questions, some that I found ridiculously hard. Meds I hadn't been familiar with used in unusual (to me) ways. Were they scored? Were they pilots? NO ONE knows, but I still passed pretty easily

If you still wish to chip away at this, you certainly may, but I hope by now you see the point you SHOULD be getting is that you need to be able to apply the knowledge you learned in school. That's IT. The test determines your judgment in nursing situations. It does so to a minimum standard, not a maximum. Everyone passes a minimum standard; about 85% the first time, anyway.

Whichever way you look, whatever way you study, bottom line is that you need to know your content & you need to know how to prioritise safely & effectively.

Go thorough as many questions as you can then try out the Mosby CAT test on-line & see what it predicts. I would personally recommend Kaplan - preferably the live course - because that is where you can learn those all important prioritising skills. That way when you do your exam you can make sure you're answering questions at a level high enough for you to pass.

The bottom line is practice, practice, practice, and practice some more.

Kaplan had tons of priority/triage/delegation questions that helped prepare many of us for the NCLEX.

No, there must be someway to rationalize NCLEX because NCLEX CAT is based on logic and reasons.

We don't need to rationalize it, let the computer do it. Take the test to the best of your ability. It is what it is.

I got all A-B's, and I knew my content walking into my first NCLEX. What failed me (and what the enemy is, in my opinion) is the level of critical thinking. This test is nothing like nursing school tests, in my opinion, which is all based on content. Don't go in thinking if you know the content, you will be OK.

With the NCLEX, you have to break down piece by piece (and sometimes 5 or 6 pieces!) of information they give you in the question to get to the answer.

Another poster on here wrote regarding priority questions, that they come in different kinds of difficulty levels. I also saw that on my NCLEX a few months ago some priority ?'s that were on the easier level (these are just examples, guys)... like would you see first?--a pt who couldn't breath vs the other pt's w/ stabilized fractures)....or harder priority questions (just an example again!)--like which pt would you discharge first (all pt's were on their death beds in critical care with very similar problems)

Now those are the ones that threw me off!

So yes, like the other poster said, there are definitely different levels of priority and triage questions.

Don't spend too much time trying to figure the test out. Now if that's going to be your total focus, then that's one thing. But, if your main goal is to become that LPN or RN, then focus more on taking the content you learned from nursing school and critically thinking.

What I have figured out is the more questions I do, the more I begin to see how the test is actually designed. You can actually have no idea what a medication is and have a high chance of getting it correctly based on what the answer choices are (process of elimination, whether it's asking for a s/s or an adverse effect).

My nursing school also works to prepare us for NCLEX by giving us NCLEX-type exams for tests. The exams are taken on the computer and there is no going back and forth.

I did not understand this at first because I was so good with "content" tests. Now I fully understand the importance as my critical thinking skills have improved tremendously.

It seems like every person on this site has gotten priority and delegation questions same with what do you do first and who do you call first. I don't think going by these questions is any indication of how well you did lets face it no one can actually state they knew the difficulty level of the questions they were anwsering. and in nursing school they say that alot of the boards is leadership, delegation and so on so that is known before we go into it.