CPNRE - January 11th, 2012

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Without talking about specific material from the exam of course, discuss how you found the exam? Difficulty level? Did the CPNRE prep manual/predictor test compare to the exam itself?

Also, feel free to post results here, when they arrive of course!

This is also the first writing of the "new" CPNRE. Prior to yesterdays writing, the exam was 8 hours long, divided into 2 booklets, rather than 4 hours and 1 booklet. As far as the content and difficulty level of this exam compared to those prior, I'm not sure if that changed as well.

I personally found the exam to be a bit more difficult than the practice exam in the CPNRE prep guide, as well as the online predictor test. I scored %95-%100 on the predictor tests, which means it concluded I have a 95-100 % chance of passing the CPNRE. I found the answers in the prep guide and the predictor test to be fairly obvious, where as on the actual CPNRE, I read a lot of questions, thought I knew the answer before looking at the available choices, but once seeing the options I wasn't so sure anymore.

Through my PN course I averaged a mixture of high 70s and low 80s during finals but I must say, I have no idea how I did on this exam. It's really one of those exams where I either did extremely well, or failed miserably. At least that's how it feels!

I wish everyone the best of luck and I hope we all get that PASS letter in the mail!

Keep us posted & share your thoughts here! :)

I am so relieved to be reading the above comments. I have no idea how anyone could've finished that exam under 2.5-3 hours. I wasn't expecting the case studies at the end of the exam either, which really slowed down my progress. Honestly, even the independent questions were loaded with information that took time to interpret.

In terms of the content of the questions, a good majority of them were clinically based scenarios that would never be discussed in my PN program. I tried to look up rationale for some of the answers, and I couldn't even find it in my textbooks. Are we supposed to know every interdisciplinary's scope of practice too?

Anyways, I'm trying to keep my spirits up. Hopefully we all *pass* !!!!

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Now that I'm reading everyones replies, I think I was a bit too easy on the exam in my original post. I'm feeling like most of you, as if we got ripped off. Remember, this exam was the first run of their "new format". In September, they were still running the old exam, which a few friends of mine did write, and it consisted of about 240 questions, split up into 2 books, and 8 hours. We had 202 questions, over 4 hours. That barely gives us a minute a question, meanwhile the old exam allowed for 120 questions in 4 hours (2 sessions) so that's 2 minutes a question.

A lot of the questions within our exam had a lot of info to consider when choosing an answer & there were a lot of cases.

I'm really wondering if there is somewhere we can go on the CNO website or a contact person to voice these concerns to. I'm sure people have already done so, there was a lot of unhappy people in our exam room, but this method is not ideal and I hope they change it for the next batch of students writing in May.

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by the way i took th exam in hamilton and there were only like 100 other people in the room with me so there was tons of space in between us but i heard for those who took it in toronto it was brutal with over 1000 people in one room. imaging the noise as people leave..........

there were 4 or 5 other rooms in hamilton as well. they were split up by last name, so there was about 100 people in one room, but 5 more rooms spread out around the building.

good luck!

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Specializes in Hospital nursing.

I wrote in January and it still took 5 weeks, just like it always does. Hopefully the time flies by for you! :)

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Yes, this is true. Last year when I wrote first time was more than enough time to write and think about the answer. Most people passed the exam. Now, I don't know what the passing percentage will be and how they going to fix it. This is about peoples licenses and stuff like that should not be happening. I'm hoping for low passing grade, otherwise I will be back in May, but only when they fix the issue. Now, I will send my survey from the prep guide and will tell them what the problem is.

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Specializes in Medical-Surgical, Rehabilitation,.

oh wow! from all your posts, i'm starting to get nervous as to taking the exam. I was planning to take it this May but since I haven't heard from CNO yet, nor do i have a single review material for CPNRE, I might just take the September 2012 exam. I had no idea they made a new format for the text. 4 hours from 8 hours with only a few questions less? that is intense! i hope you all will make it.

by the way, if any of you can please suggest a good or recent books/review materials or guide for CPNRE, i would greatly appreciate it. i'm new here in Canada and I'm having a hard time looking for RPN materials even online. i wouldn't mind buying second hand materials as long as they're not too old. hope to hear from any of you.

God bless with your results!

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by the way, if any of you can please suggest a good or recent books/review materials or guide for CPNRE, i would greatly appreciate it. i'm new here in Canada and I'm having a hard time looking for RPN materials even online. i wouldn't mind buying second hand materials as long as they're not too old. hope to hear from any of you.

God bless with your results!

Here is an NCLEX-PN review NCLEX-PN found it to be helpful for a review of everything, although it is fairly long so I suggest reading a bit everyday.

I also studied from the CPNRE prep guide, 3rd and 4th edition but I didn't find them to be of much help after writing the exam itself. I found the prep guide to be fairly easy, and the prep guide is supposed to reflect the type of questions and difficulty level of the exam itself and many fellow students who wrote this past Tuesday found the prep guide to extremely down-play the difficulty of the actual exam, not adequately preparing us.

I also used the predictor test (both of them) as a study tool and scored 95%-100% but I also found those questions fairly easy and not comparable to the exam itself.

I'd still review the prep guides, things may change by the time you write your exam, at least I'd hope so.

Good luck!

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Hi guys, I just noticed that CPNRE in September 2012 is no longer on CNO website. What does it mean? Did they get into trouble or there will be major changes coming?

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Can you post a link to what you mean? I don't think I ever remember seeing the September exam up? Just as far as May, because they still have January up.

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I think September used to be up but might be wrong. Does anyone have any ideas of how they going to fix the issue with this last exam?

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I think September used to be up but might be wrong. Does anyone have any ideas of how they going to fix the issue with this last exam?

The CNO will have to be made aware of the issue in the first place. If enough people voice their concerns to them, then they may look into it? We'll see. Or they may get an extremely low average after marking the exams and question the new format.

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Specializes in Medical-Surgical, Rehabilitation,.

September exam is on September 12, 2012. CNO did not post it on their website yet.

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