After a high number of failures in fall 2022 and spring 2023, the pass rates for the nursing entrance exam have jumped from 63 per cent in September 2023 to 92 per cent in March this year.
The exam was held on March 26.
As a result, clinical settings will be able to count on 1,702 new nurses. On X, Health Minister Christian Dubé congratulated the students who passed the exam and said that “we need these qualified nurses in the network.”
However, fewer nurses are ready to join the healthcare network independently. In September 2023, 1,940 candidates passed the exam.
The results of the Ordre des infirmières et infirmiers du Québec (OIIQ) entrance exam had fallen drastically in September 2022, to a pass rate of 51.4 per cent. In March 2022, they were still low at 53.3 per cent.
In 2023, the OIIQ introduced administrative measures that raised the success rate to 63 per cent in September 2023.
“We’re trying to explain these results,” said Yves de Repentigny, vice-president of the Fédération nationale des enseignantes et des enseignants du Québec (FNEEQ-CSN). “It’s surprising because as recently as a year and a half ago, in September 2022, we were at 51 per cent. (…) We haven’t seen anything like this since September 2020.”
In a press release, the OIIQ commented that “the deployed strategies to ensure the success of the exam and the sustained collaboration with the various partners have paid off.”
The exam held in March 2024 was the opportunity to consider all the recommendations made by the Commissioner for Admission to Professions André Gariépy. In a report published last year, Gariépy concluded that the high failure rates were due to “flaws and weaknesses in the examination.”
The modify the difficulties of the exam, the Office des professions du Québec announced Marie Rinfret as governance controller for the OIIQ in November. Her role is to support the OIIQ in the process of reviewing its examination and improving its governance.
The OIIQ has indicated that it’s “well placed” to stop relaxing the measures that have been in place since January 2023. These include the number of attempts and the regulatory provisions relating to the time limit for passing the exam.
Candidates will return to maximum of three attempts to pass the exam, whereas the relaxed measures had allowed unlimited attempts.
“We wonder about the returning the three-attempt limit for candidates to the profession,” said de Repentigny. “We still have a labour shortage, but we understand the need to ensure that people applying to the profession are fit to work, and that requires high professional standards in an environment where sometimes, it’s a matter of life and death.”
He added that candidates who have passed the exam after more than three attempts have made up for lost time and achieved the required level of competence.
“We don’t have a clear position, but we’re looking into it,” he said.
Candidates can continue to benefit from support measures to help them prepare for the exam, which is welcomed by the FNEEQ.
Difficult exams
The OIIQ had suggested that the pandemic might have played a role in the lower results obtained in 2022 and 2023.
However, de Repentigny pointed out that most of the students who took the exam in 2024 began their CEGEP studies in fall 2020 or winter 2021.
“So, these are people who were also in the middle of the pandemic,” he said.
According to de Repentigny, it’s necessary to explain the large number of passing rates, but it’s difficult to determine what has had an effect because of the “opacity of the exam.”
“The problem is that the exam is opaque. We don’t know what it looks like, we don’t know what the level of the questions is. The Ordre swears to us that the exam has always remained unchanged in terms of question style and level of complexity, but we have no idea,” he said.
He hopes that the measures put in place and the support provided by Rinfret will have a long-term effect on the results and the number of candidates who register for the exam.
The OIIQ maintains that work to improve the examination process will continue. Candidates who have not passed will have to sit for the next session in September 2024.
—
The Canadian Press health content receives funding through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. The Canadian Press is solely responsible for editorial choices.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews