Foreign Nurse passed in 2nd attempt (NCLEX-RN)

5 Posts

Hello everyone!

Just wanted to share my experience as a foreign nurse with the NCLEX-RN.

I finished my BSN during 2013 in Mexico, I decided to start this journey in 2014 but meanwhile I worked in Mexico as a RN.

It took a long time and patience for me to get all the paperwork to get accepted to do the NCLEX. In 2017, I got my first chance to do it. By this time I was working as a CNA in a Hospital in El Paso, Texas.

I decided to go with the online HURST review, I did all the QBANK questions and the "Elevate" review. I did all the studying I could for 2 months prior to the test. I ended up doing the 265 questions and failing. After this, I found out that the QBANK in hurst is nothing similar to the NCLEX, but the review is great, specially after all these years being out of school.

So, for my second chance I decided that I was going to completely focus on this test. For starters, I quit my job and dedicated all my time to studying.

Praying daily before studying! I decided to get the Kaplan review, the QBANK is good and there are some great tips for therapeutic communication and answering questions when you don't have a clue.

I studied for about 6-8 hours daily from Monday to Friday, I recorded myself reading the normal lab values and heard them whenever I had a chance.

Two months before doing the test again, I purchased a two month subscription to UWORLD, BEST IDEA EVER!! For this two months I only did questions, 50-75 daily, reading the rationale and writing the important things in a notebook. The questions in UWORLD are soooo similar to the actual NCLEX, I can even say that they seem harder, and I was getting scores that ranged from 42-72%

4 days before the test, I decided to quit studying and spend time with my husband and family, and just listen to the lab values here and there.

the big day finally came and I sat in the testing center thinking positive and ended up doing 75 questions with a ton of SATA questions

one hour and a half later I was out of the testing center feeling like I had to keep studying because I failed again....

four hour our after that I did the Pearson cue trick and got the "GOOD POP UP" but still was nervous about the results.

After the 48 hours of hell I had to wait, I found out I passed the test !!

So, after this long post, I just wanted to tell every foreign nurse out there trying to pass this test: don't get discouraged!! We have to give a 200% because of the many obstacles we face, but we can do it !!!