The Order of Nurses of Quebec (OIIQ) is not postponing the next professional exam scheduled for March, despite recommendations from the Commissioner for Admissions to Professions. However, students can choose not To and wait for next September.
Posted at 12:07 p.m
The Order also grants a fourth attempt to candidates who fail their third and final examination. Previously, candidates could take the exam a maximum of three times. If they failed, they had to reorient themselves professionally or start their studies again.
The OIIQ will also return the right to practice as a candidate to practice nursing (CEPI) to individuals who fail the September exam for a third time.
“We have proposed several flexibility measures to encourage student success without ever jeopardizing the level of service provided to Quebec’s population,” OIIQ President Luc Mathieu said in a press release on Wednesday.
Almost half of nursing students failed the most recent Order of Nurses of Quebec (OIIQ) exam last September. The pass rate for candidates taking it for the first time was 51.4%. On average over the past four years, the success rate has been closer to 82%.
Improvement of the evaluation process
Following the controversy over a disproportionate failure rate, Admissions Commissioner Me André Gariépy was asked to investigate the reasons that led to this fiasco.
Last week he recommended postponing the Order’s next exam, saying “it would be unwise to force a candidate to attend the next session of the exam” before it was known what went wrong last autumn.
On Wednesday, the OIIQ announced that, exceptionally, students will have the option not To or not to show up for next March’s exam without a failing note being added to their file. The next review is scheduled for September 2023.
The college also plans to improve the assessment process, including adding exam sessions and developing “better tools to assess nurses’ ability to practice,” according to its website.
“A Poisoned Gift”
Nursing student Amélie Zol sees the Order’s actions as a “poisoned gift”. In order not to extend their school career, the high school graduates have no choice but to take the exam in March, she says.
“If we don’t show up, our studies will be postponed by a semester because we have to have our nursing degree for our internships at the university,” she explains.
She is “very happy” that the students who failed the third time are getting a fourth chance, she says. “But the expectation was that failure would be canceled for everyone,” she says, adding that those who are on the first or second failure also “have a lot of fear. “It doesn’t leave much room for the next exam, especially since you don’t know what to expect,” she said.
“About Elements”
The Commissioner’s work to date reveals “worrying elements both in the testing and in the training of the candidates”.
The starting point of Me Gariépy’s investigation are two hypotheses that could explain this high failure rate. On the one hand, either “the examination has methodological deficiencies” or, on the other hand, “the training of the candidates is not sufficiently prepared in some cases”. A combination of the two factors could also play a role.
At the time the results were announced, the OIIQ had blamed the context of the pandemic for justifying an inadequate learning or exam preparation framework for students in the various nursing programs.
With the Canadian Press