A collective community approach to preparing nursing students for the NCLEX RN examination

ABNF Journal, The, May-June, 2004 by Laura McQueen, Patricia Shelton, Lynn Zimmerman

Abstract: This paper examines the challenges that nursing faculty at one historically black college and university (HBCU) embark upon when preparing students for first time passage on the NCLEX RN examination. In response to these challenges, the nursing faculty advocate a collective community approach which focuses on nurse educators working together to share ideas and strategies to ensure NCLEX-RN success for nursing graduates and subsequently, their nursing programs.

**********

Nurse educators know that they cannot avoid or risk the consequences of not preparing their nursing students for success on the NCLEX-RN exam. Like it or not, nurse educators must "deal with" the NCLEX-RN exam as well as their concerns for their students and the current labeling that indicates their nursing program's NCLEX "success." Success as defined in this context is a nursing program's first time writing and passage rate on the national examination for registered nurses. This standard for a successful nursing program is a special challenge for nursing schools that have not set a 100% passage rate as the benchmark for educating and integrating minority students into nursing practice. As faculty members at a historically black university (HBCU), we are committed to assisting our students with first time passage on this exam. This paper examines the challenges of this 100% benchmark and the strategies used at a historically black school of nursing to prepare our graduates for success on the national standardized nursing examination.

The undeniable pressures of reaching a 100% passage on the NCLEX-RN examination is a special challenge for schools of nursing that have historically had a commitment to working with a variety of students, including students having special needs for achieving success on standardized tests. As faculty members at an HBCU, we acknowledge and accept the challenge of educating a higher percentage of students with special needs in passing tests, most commonly referred to as "at risk students." Several of our students, including students having English as a second language, have special needs in preparing for the national standardized nursing examination and need the help of educators and nurses to achieve success on this examination. In response to their needs, our faculty invests in a collective community approach to assist our students in overcoming the challenges and obstacles of standardized testing in nursing.

Testing by national standards, in any form, is not friendly to many of our students who have spent most, or all, of their lives overcoming testing obstacles. National standardized testing is not a friendly game of competition, especially for those encountering numerous obstacles as their normal way of life. Likewise, it seems ironic that nursing, a profession of care givers, engages in practices that divide students into categories of winners and losers through standardized national testing for nurses. This idea of continuing to adhere to that practice seems contradictory in a country facing a nationwide shortage of nurses to care for the public. More preposterous is that, as a group of nurses, we are not more engaged in the struggle to assist our new graduate nurses into the practice arena. Should we, in effect, devise a means for all of our new graduates to enter into the healthcare arena to assist our overworked and understaffed practicing nurses?

Perhaps the most alarming consequence of this competitive battle is that success on the NCLEX-RN examination has become the core component and the primary focus for a nursing program. Nursing faculty, keenly aware of the importance of the NCLEX-RN examination, acknowledge its existence to beginning nursing students and in many conversations with other faculty members. Paradoxically, these same faculty state the schools of nursing from which they graduated focused on learning and training as a prerequisite to practice as a nurse, in contrast to testing their skills to pass the NCLEX-RN examination. Many faculty members did not "hear about" this mysterious NCLEX- RN exam until their senior year of nursing school. Today, our students "hear about" this final examination upon admission into their nursing program and are constantly reminded of its imposing consequences through graduation and their actual test date.

As faculty members at an HBCU, we are aware of many of the difficulties in preparing our students for the NCLEX-RN examination. We also know our school will be placed under close scrutiny if our scores fall below the passing testing standard for nurses in this country. Equally, we know how difficult this experience is for our students in their struggle to compete and succeed in today's world. This struggle is a constant reminder of the difficulties in being judged and compared to others through testing. We face a daunting task in assisting our students in their struggle to compete and overcome the testing obstacle placed before them.

We found that any student deemed, "at risk" for testing, are anxious about testing which is yet another obstacle to overcome--another struggle to engage in. This particular obstacle is a competitive roadblock to obtaining a nursing license. Anxious students see these obstacles as "beating the odds" to prove themselves worthy, this time to practice as a nurse. Naturally, this obstacle has our students worried they will be "found out" in this final test. This final testing exposes the student's weaknesses in testing and their fears of not being worthy enough to meet the current NCLEX-RN standards. Consequently, many of our students do not feel confident in their abilities to meet these standards and measure up in a society that fails to recognize their neverending struggle to overcome unfair adversity in their lives (Hooks, 1989). We discovered students fear faculty "finding out" what they do not know and many fear this could label them as unready for nursing practice. Thus, this last major test of nursing is a fearful roadblock for many students and a painful reminder to them of bow difficult it is to rise to the top of the heap when one's life has always been a struggle to just stay in the game. As a result, these students may "hide out" from faculty in an attempt not to be noticed or placed under scrutiny.