Almost half of nursing students failed the most recent Order of Nurses of Quebec (OIIQ) exam last September. Distraught future nurses struggle to make sense of what happened.
Posted at 4:34pm
Alice Girard-Bossé La Presse
“I studied about 40 hours a week all summer. I failed the exam with 51%. My friends also failed at 52%, 53%, or 54%. However, we are girls who did well in their DEC. I’m just doing my Abitur and I have very good grades,” says Amélie Zo on the phone. The pass mark for the exam is 55%.
The pass rate for the September exam for candidates taking it for the first time was 51.4%, the OIIQ said on Friday. On average over the past four years, the success rate has been closer to 82%.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY AMÉLIE ZO
Amelie Zo
The young woman, who completed her college studies at Cégep de Sherbrooke and is currently doing her high school diploma at the Université de Sherbrooke in addition to her work in a CHSLD, cannot explain the situation. “I really wonder why the exam was so difficult,” she says.
The pandemic pointed this out
Chantal Lemay, Director of Admissions and Registration at OIIQ, explains this decline as a result of the pandemic. “The cohort who took this exam completed most of their studies during the pandemic,” she says, adding that the students had to juggle online courses and implications for their internships.
The exam, which consists of 134 multiple-choice questions, takes a full day. Ms Lemay claims that the September exam was designed in the same way as previous years.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY JEANNE PLOURDE
Jeanne Plourde
Jeanne Plourde failed the exam for the second time. She scored 54%, 1 point below the pass mark. “When I saw the result, I shook and started crying. My roommates tried to comfort me. I checked again to make sure that was really my result. I’ve never cried so much,” she says.
She deplores the fact that students’ clinical judgment is assessed through the choice of answers. “We’re in a room for seven hours and react to response options that don’t fit our work environment,” she says.
Students who have not passed the subject examination can take the examination again in March. Candidates can take the exam a maximum of three times. If they fail, they have to reorient themselves to another profession or start their studies again.
A petition circulated on social media on Friday to lower the pass mark to 50%. “What we are taught in school is not how the exam is set up. I think it would be important to fine tune the way we are taught and the nursing school exam,” wrote petition organizer Joelle Girard. By the end of the day, the petition had garnered more than 3,000 signatures.