NCLEX Hex

Many weeks have passed since I sat for the dreaded nursing boards, (bka: NCLEX which is the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses). What a nightmare. Let me say that standardized tests are not my bag. I could say a lot about these tools, as a social scientist. But I won't. Not because I did well on the SAT -- as matriculating community college student I never had to endure them -- but because I have been privileged enough to do well enough on the GRE to get into gradate school, twice. Because, let's face it, it's not about what you know, but how you've learned to test -- and that is about factors that have absolutely nothing to do with intelligence. Let me also point out that I passed with flying colors the qualifying examinations in my doctoral program... 72 hours of exams that did not even come close to the hell that is the NCLEX.

First of all, for anyone who has yet to experience this rite of passage, you will walk away thinking you've failed. Or at least normal people will think this... plenty of my colleagues walked away celebrating the 75 question blue screen moment, a kind of confidence that I will never know in this lifetime. I would have presumed failure. But not that this matters, as I sat through 265 questions and 5.5 hours, having left convinced that I did not answer a single question correctly. This means that never, not once, was I certain of an answer I was giving. That experience erodes confidence very quickly.

Because of laws governing the boards and the insanely detailed waiver I had to sign after being fingerprinted and photographed and finger printed again, I cannot give any hints about test content. But that is not really the useful or interesting part of the story. The interesting part is that this is a psychometric test, which creates a "passing standard" for all of those who sit for the boards. In simple terms this means that every person who takes the exam should get an equal percentage of questions correct and incorrect. As a person performs well, the questions become more difficult until a question is answered incorrectly. In that case, the next question will be slightly less difficult until the person is again answering correctly. Once a threshold is reached, wherein the test-taker has demonstrated that s/he is answering more difficult questions correctly than incorrectly, the the exam will end. This can be at 75 questions, or any arbitrary number in between, up to my 265. Likewise, if one is doing poorly, answering lower-level questions incorrectly more than 50% of the time, the exam will end. The clincher is that once the blue screen appears, you have to raise your hand, are escorted from the room, and then you have to wait up to two weeks for your results.

Many of my colleagues were able to log on to the BRN website and check to see if their names appeared in the permanent license verification system within the next two days, a kind of work-around for those waiting for results by mail. Personally, I took the test on a Friday, expected to see (or rather not see, given my commitment to failure) my name on the site on Tuesday. When my name didn't appear, I prepared for the studying process, again... but, on the advice of a friend, I called the BRN to be certain the documentation in my file was complete. Lo and behold, no transcripts had ever arrived from my institution. I dragged myself to the registrar, paid for transcripts (again) and waited.

One night before bed, about three weeks later, The Kid said, "Mom, I know you passed that test. You're a nurse now." With this bit of kismet, I woke the next morning and checked the BRN. There was my name. The card arrived the next day.

The moral of this long, long story is: never fear. It is a very difficult test for which to study, the questions are very hard to comprehend on first reading (and I am a native English speaker... bless all those who take it with English as a second language), it is difficult to gauge and it is not by any means an accurate judge of what kind of nurse you will be. I am not sure how well it even measures competence. It is, like many other standardized exams, a test of something determined to be a means to find a 'measurable' proficiency among candidates. This does not address ability nor knowledge. I suspect some of the best nurses are those that have to take it more than once. And anyone who has to sit through it more than once deserves a medal of honor.