I can't find anything online about the high failure rate of canadian graduate nurses nclex

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I was lucky enough myself to pass the canadian nclex 2015 but a lot of my co-students have not. I have been trying to get information on what is going to be done about it, if anything and there does not seem to be anyone talking about it online. I have family members that I graduated with that have not been successful and out of the 50ish new graduates the hospital I work at approximately 50% have failed. Prior to the Canadian NCLEX this is unheard of. Anyone know if anything is being done about this?

I see your point. Most students in the U.S. use some kind of review (or 3) after graduating before taking the NCLEX. I guess some could argue that we shouldn't have to use NCLEX focused reviews to pass. We should learn everything we need in school. Ultimately, it's up to us to prepare for the test, and we choose to pay for those additional reviews.

"Most" students do not take review courses, and they pass because they did learn what they should have in their educational programs.

I know that my co-students as well as myself all bought at least two separate study guides. American ones of course, and I know for myself I felt like I had to learn the material from scratch. They say that the Canadian and American entry level is 98% the same but I will tell you that our school is known for 100% pass rates on the CRNE and we've had a 25% fail rate and we are a small class with 1:1 instructor time. The rest of the universities in NB are not doing well. I passed but I still feel this is an unfair exam. And honestly I'm surprised that there hasn't been any class action lawsuits against CNA or universities about this sudden change and high fail rates. The nursing degree is one of the hardest degrees as per macleans and to finish and feel prepared and fail the nclex is devastating to people.

Specializes in Neonatal Nurse Practitioner.
"Most" students do not take review courses, and they pass because they did learn what they should have in their educational programs.

I have only come across a handful of people that haven't paid for some kind of review whether it was simply books like Saunders and LaCharity or expensive courses like Kaplan and Hurst. I gotta disagree with you here.

There was something on CBC radio in the past couple of weeks. A nurse administrator in Thunder Bay said many grad RNs hadn't passed and they were trying to decide if the should be let go or retained as grads. She said the failure rate was 12% in past years; 30% this year

Specializes in Operating Room.

This might be of interest to you all. I found the percentage of passing rates pretty shocking for Ontario. Check out this letter from the ONA president it goes into detail about the passing rate in Ontario. She is calling upon the CNO to allow applicants to re-write the exam an unlimited amount of times.

ONA - ONA News - ONA to CNO: Allow applicants to write the NCLEX an unlimited number of times

This is interesting. I wrote the Canadian exam, then the Us NCLEX Exam a couple of years later. They were different but I didn't think either was unduly difficult. I wonder what has changed, I am surprised CDNs are doing so poorly. One thing---some units of measurement, like blood glucose, cholesterol, hg are different between the two countries. How is that handled on the test?

Specializes in Operating Room.

At this point in Canada we are taught to use US measurements for the NCLEX-RN exam. Not sure if this will change in the years to come...

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