NCLEX: How many times is enough?

Nursing Students NCLEX

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I was thinking about posting this question earlier, but decided not to post until I read a thread dealing with the topic. So what do y'all think? If a person hasn't passed the test by the nth time (you change the "n"), should they give it up because they obviously (in your opinion) haven't learned what they need to learn, therefore, would not be a safe practicing nurse?

I think an interesting question (and the makings of a nice bit of research if it hasn't already been done) would be to investigate the correlation between number of attempts to pass and the "quality" of nursing provided upon passing.

Specializes in Med Surg, Telemetry, Long Term Care.

make peace,not war.hehe!

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Specializes in Med-Surg.
gee, i don't know. how many tries did you need?

you really want to know? lmao; you are too funny. :chuckle

i took the exam once. it stopped at 75 questions in a little under 60 minutes, and yes i passed! any other questions?

are you going to answer the question i asked in my last post now?

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Specializes in Med Surg, Telemetry, Long Term Care.

In this forum,everyone can lie.no offense to anyone.Everyone can brag or boast that they have a 3.97 average.Everyone can boast that they have an award or something.Dont do to others,what you dont want others to do to you.

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Specializes in Home Care, Hospice, OB.
really? what evidence is there that indicates that a rn that passed the nclex on the first try will be a better nurse than a rn that took several attempts to pass?

you could always do a retrograde analysis to find the answer, after defining your parameters and definitions...or you could look back to the question posed by the op. :smokin:

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Quite a few states actually have limits in place as to the number of times that one can test without having to complete a special program, or even attend nursing school once again. The magic number for most is three attempts before something else is required to be completed. And there are a couple that do not permit any further attempts after the three without a full course completed once again.

About the only two that have completely unlimited attempts at the exam are NY as well as CA.

Thanks, Suzanne, for the info. I was unaware of all that. It rather makes the whole argument moot, doesn't it? Well, almost: seems NY and CA have a bit of catching up to do with the rest of the country where the NCLEX parameters are concerned.

I do feel a tad vindicated in that my "arbitrary" assignation of three attempts being the maximum seems to be shared by a considerable number of people who matter. I don't mean the good people of this message board who shared their own views, but rather the people in charge at the various State BONs.

This whole thing reminds me of the Infinite Monkey Theory: given an infinite amount of time and an infinite amount of paper, a thousand monkeys will eventually come up with all the works of William Shakespeare, Shelley and Keats. Doesn't really make them poets, does it?

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Warning, OT comment coming up! :)

IMO, three attempts is more than enough. At the risk of further flames for voicing my opinion in a similar thread, the NCLEX determines minimum competency and if you're adequately prepared is NOT that difficult. Yes, it's stressful because a lot depends on your passing it, but it's doable obviously.

Hey, good to "see" you again! How you been, girl??

Back to the topic ;)

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Specializes in Med-Surg.
you could always do a retrograde analysis to find the answer, after defining your parameters and definitions...or you could look back to the question posed by the op. :smokin:

it seems that you cannot validate your concerns for the "poor patients" being cared for by a rn that took multiple attempts to pass the nclex. i asked the same question that the op asked and you still haven't answered it. where is the research that confirms that the nurses that pass the nclex within three tries perform better than other nurses?

while i don't agree with some of the other poster's views, most of them have been thought provoking and i can appreciate that.

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Specializes in Home Care, Hospice, OB.

sorry, i have switched over to the congressional record. go find a little friend to play with, dear...

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Specializes in Med-Surg.
sorry, i have switched over to the congressional record. go find a little friend to play with, dear...

i'll respect my elders. . .have fun! bu-bye

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Specializes in Med, Gyne Surg, Gyne Onc, Antepartum, ER.

Thats an interesting comment you make at the end about correlation between how many times test is written, and the "quality" of the nurse. I think that is way too subjective. I think its safe to say that people expect some of the same qualities in a nurse (competent), but all people look for little things. They might think less of a nurse cuz she doesn't have a sense of humor like the last nurse that took care of them etc. I'm from Canada, and if I'm not mistaken, here you have only 3 chances to write the exams. There was one girl who came here from the Philippines, and wrote her RN exam 3 times, didn't pass, so wrote it as an LPN. In addition to the licensing exams, in our class, we had one person that couldn't complete nursing school, because he had failed the math exam that is required pre-pharmacology. You only have 3 tries on the math test, and you have to get greater than 90%. Rach

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I was thinking about posting this question earlier, but decided not to post until I read a thread dealing with the topic. So what do y'all think? If a person hasn't passed the test by the nth time (you change the "n"), should they give it up because they obviously (in your opinion) haven't learned what they need to learn, therefore, would not be a safe practicing nurse?

I think an interesting question (and the makings of a nice bit of research if it hasn't already been done) would be to investigate the correlation between number of attempts to pass and the "quality" of nursing provided upon passing.

Hello there,

I loved your message.. but I had a question though: I am from Canada (Québec) and here it is a very rough exam to pass (practice 16 patients and written 200 questions) so... if the 3th time you did not pass all your school is 0 NOTHING you have to move on with another job in your life ! (which many of us dont - by the way I am in my 3rd year of nursing school at Université du QC à Hull; we have 4 years!) so...the point is I had some friends which they worked on ER, ICU, etc between theirs final exams.. and they were quoted as "good nurse" on the floor..so what's happend , why after so many years of working and practicing in Quebec they push us practically to fail! so ... I think they do not want us so many nurses here! That could be the answer - because the exams are so complicated and involves 3 days of examinations ans so on!

Cheers

PS- 9 times NCLEX waw in my dreams to be allowed to give 9 times the license:))LOL

xoxox

good luck to all of you

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Nice build up. I almost got down on my knees and praised jesus when you said you passed. Your a hero, and I mean that with all due respect.:argue:

-------------------------

Muthu

FSBO

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