THUNDER BAY -- Local nursing students are failing their licensing exam at an alarming rate.
A new College of Nurses exam has been brought in this year from the United States.
And the high failure rate is forcing the Regional Hospital to restructure how they schedule their nursing staff.
Details on the pass-fail rate of nursing students at Lakehead University and Confederation College are unavailable.
But according to data from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing for the first quarter of 2015, the test has a less than 30 per cent pass rate for nursing students from outside the U.S.
The Regional Hospital's Chief Nurse Executive, Rhonda Crocker Ellacott, says the new exam has caused a lot of their new hires to fail.
The hospital has created a unit care aid role, to help the unsuccessful nurses until they can write the exam again.
The vice-president of the Ontario Nurses Association, Anne Clark, says it's an unfair situation for nursing students who have successfully completed four years of schooling, only to then fail a test based on American nursing standards.
(TBT News)
Comment: Ontario Registered Nurses have much more responsibility (NPs allowed to diagnoses,investigate and prescribe).. Only one "MAGNET" accredited hosp in Canada by American Nurses Evaluation Centre: Toronto Mt Sinai (Jan 15,2015). In USA 7% of hospitals have MAGNET status. USA computerized exam obviously has a higher standard in keeping with an increasing independent role of Community Nurse-GPs..
