Use graduate students who fail State Boards?

[Chellyse]

I posted a thread on Nursing Politics asking for views on the "new" Excelsior fast track program offered in Mich. here:

https://allnurses.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23607

After reading views it made me think about a thread started here a long time ago regarding Graduate Nurses who failed the State Boards...Anyway just curious How many times can you take the Boards? is it selective to each state or nationally?How many failures can you have?

Now I am not suggesting lowering the standards of the Nursing Boards at all ,let me get that straight out of the box, but if we need more nurses is there a way to utilize this populace?

I know in many states they can work as PCT's, I am referring to say... taking mandated additional courses then rechallenging.

Please don't blast me for raising the question, I would appreciate honest feedback.

Thanks,

Michele:confused:

[hnudona]

I have to speak for those like me who tried and failed the nclex. I think most of the time it is anxiety that keeps me from passing and not my actual knowledge. I personally think that they should let the instructors in the clinical sites pass or fail the students as they do the actual work on the floors instead of going by a book test. I know that I am a good nurse and it seems so unfair to go through all that schooling and then be told you can't take the test again. I am not the only one who feels this way about the book tests. Recently a young student at a high school was exempted from taking the CAT form of testing because they found that it did not acurately rate his knowledge. I say that the NCLEX does not acurately rate my nursing knowledge either. What do you think about that?

[Sahara311]

well, I am anxiously awaiting my results, took the NCLEX on thursday...

we had to pay $390!!!!!

I only got about 90 questions on the PN test....so, i dunno what that means, or if it means anything at all....

[elkpark]

Keep in mind, also, that part of the fee for taking the NCLEX is whatever the private-for-profit testing services centers (that have nothing to do with nursing except that they've gotten the contract for administering the NCLEX) charge for that service (in my state, it is the Sylvan Learning Center chain; I'm sure it varies from state to state). I have no idea how much that might be, but I bet it's a fair chunk of change.

Back in the Dark Ages, when I took the NCLEX, when it was still "paper & pencil" and only offered on two dates per year, in one location, it was administered by the state Board of Nursing. I don't know how other states did it (and I'm sure there were variations), but the site was on a state university campus and all the personnel involved in administering and proctoring the exam (dozens of people, as you can imagine) were either BON employees doing this as part of their regular jobs, or nursing instructors from around the state who volunteered to assist for those few days. So, "overhead" costs were v. low, and there was no profit for a private corporation built into the fee. All that changed when the NCLEX went to the computerized version offered through the private testing centers.

[Sahara311]

well, the $390 was worth it, I passed!

[Indy, LPN, LVN]

Congratulations!

I thought the thing was expensive because they have to pay for these people to videotape you and babysit you because, if there's a way to cheat, people have and will cheat on it.

I'm not going to argue with raising the passing standard. The format is the devil, I agree. The whole deal causes more than enough anxiety. But I think that the anxiety would be there whether it were CAT format or just a whole bunch of fact questions format. It's a licensing exam; you don't get your goal of all that education unless you pass the test so it is not going to be a walk in the park, it's going to cause people to freak out.

So if cost and format are taken out, I don't guess I have anything to argue with the National Council about. Sorry.

[hospitalstaph]

I have to speak for those like me who tried and failed the nclex. I think most of the time it is anxiety that keeps me from passing and not my actual knowledge. I personally think that they should let the instructors in the clinical sites pass or fail the students as they do the actual work on the floors instead of going by a book test. I know that I am a good nurse and it seems so unfair to go through all that schooling and then be told you can't take the test again. I am not the only one who feels this way about the book tests. Recently a young student at a high school was exempted from taking the CAT form of testing because they found that it did not acurately rate his knowledge. I say that the NCLEX does not acurately rate my nursing knowledge either. What do you think about that?

I am a just a student so I am not sure if you are correct. I had to take a pre-algebra test to "test into" my college algebra class. Just for fun I took the NCLEX pretest while I was there. I scored higher on that than the algebra test!!! Now I should point out that a lot of the question were pharmacology and IBD related, but still.... I did pretty darn welll. Algebra is killing me right now though:)

T