Foreign educated - passing NCLEX

[pommkiwi]

Hi there,

To all those unfortunate souls who are preparing to take their NCLEX or are awaiting results - this is for you.

A little bit about myself -

I am a UK educated (male) nurse (9 years) who is currently working in New Zealand, my American partner and I are planning to move to the states (Ithaca New York), so obviously I have had to prepare for the NCLEX exam.

I gave myself a few months in order to prepare for the exam, and for the ridiculously long drawn out process to get my ATT (around 18 months!) so yeah I had time to prepare!

I used several texts, the most useful for a non-US educated RN I found was Saunders comprehensive review, I have not seen it's equivalent. If you were not educated in the US I cannot stress how useful a few months working hard from this book can be, there are many differences between UK and US education that you will not know unles you study!

The other texts I used were, Mosby's review questions and the Incredibly-easy RN questions and answers book. During my studies I found it very useful to answer questions from different books, they all seem to vary slightly in the way they would word questions.

I also used the Kaplan strategy book but overall found the other books more useful (I would say that the Kaplan CD was the most 'like the exam' in look and feel but would recommend the above books for volume of questions - which in my opinion helps the most)

Definitely I would say that after a good basic grounding from studying from a comprehensive nursing review text (or review course/nursing program), answering questions are your best tool to prepare for the exam. I found that when I got questions wrong it helped me to concrete that information in my head better than reading dry facts, also I noticed information in question rationales that I missed even when I had hand written notes on the subject.

In the last month before I sat the exam I would say I was averaging 2-300 questions per day (I also did some the night before and the morning of the exam - not sure it helped get me in the 'mode' but I couldn't help it). And no matter how well I thought I knew the subject I still got questions wrong.

Anyway, for me the date came around pretty fast, and I was on a plane to Australia to take the exam in Sydney. Tired, no sleep, nervous i went to the test center early am, went through the necessary security checks etc. Sat down at my computer screen and started answering questions, and like they say practice questions are not quite the same as the real thing - they are right! the exam was hard - what patient do I discharge if there is a major incident --from the list they gave, NONE! but I had to choose and I guess I chose right because I found out this morning that I passed in 75 questions.

To be honest despite my girlfriend's faith in me I was pretty convinced that I was going to have to fly back to Sydney and retake because the only questions I could remember from the exam I had gone over again and KNEW I had answered wrong, i guess the ones I couldn't remember I had done OK on.

Anyway, I wish all of you the very best, and no matter how senior or experienced you are in your country study, think like they want you to think - a new graduate nurse thinking textbook answers, and study - HARD. Put drug names and lab results up on your bathroom wall -important fact on your fridge. I'm off to take all mine down and give them to a mate who sits his exam soon - feels pretty good.

I hope some things here will be useful to someone.

[Silverdragon102, BSN]

congrats, not sure how soon you are planning on going to the US but currently no visas

[LynseyEB]

:ancong!:

I am so happy for you!!!!

[caliotter3]

Congratulations!!!:balloons::balloons::balloons:

[pommkiwi]

Thanks for the kind responses.

As far as visas are concerned do they only allocate a certain number each year? I thought the US was as desperate for nurses as everywhere else.

I guess it looks like a december wedding;)

[Silverdragon102, BSN]

Would suggest you check out the International forum and threads on retrogression. Currently visa bulletin for next month becomes Unavailable and also current processing dates are dependant on where you where born but looking from 2001 to 2006. If the plan is to get married it may be the quicker option for you..

International forum

Visa bulletin nurses come under EB3

Note I do not recommend getting married just to move to the US but if already the plan

[gwafuh_rn, BSN, RN]

congrats