Que. nurses' order to reflect on recommendations concerning failed exams

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The Quebec nurses' order (OIIQ) has given itself one week to respond to recommendations made following the disproportionate failure rate in last fall's nursing entrance exam.

The recommendations were made as part of a preliminary investigation by André Gariépy, the commissioner who oversees access to professional orders.

Will the next nursing entrance exam be postponed? Will candidates who failed for a third time in the last test be given a final chance? The answers are yet to come, according to a OIIQ statement released online Thursday afternoon.

In a Tweet, the OIIQ said it was aware that "this situation creates uncertainty" for nursing candidates and educational and health institutions that rely on the arrival of reinforcements.

However, the order said it needs a week to "properly analyze the report and its recommendations" and to "explore the various options."

It has therefore given itself until Jan. 25 to send its response to the commissioner.

The OIIQ also said it will continue to cooperate fully with the investigation.

In the progress report made public on Wednesday, Gariépy said he had collected "worrying elements on the examination as well as on the training of candidates."

He said "candidates have likely suffered a prejudice in their professional integration" during the most recent test.

Last September, 51 per cent of the candidates who attempted the exam did not obtain a passing score of 55 per cent.

When the results were unveiled, the OIIQ blamed the context of the pandemic for an inadequate learning or exam preparation environment for students in various nursing programs.

To begin his investigation, Commissioner Gariépy relied on two hypotheses that could explain the high failure rate: either "the exam has methodological flaws" or "the training of the candidates [...] did not prepare them adequately." A combination of both factors could also be at fault.

He therefore proposed postponing the upcoming March admission exam and "conservative measures" for the 200 or so candidates excluded from the admission process because of a third failure.

According to Gariépy, "it would be imprudent to force everyone to sit for the next exam before we know what went wrong last fall."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Jan. 19, 2023.