In the past two years, our NCLEX pass rate has decreased, and we have made several changes in the undergraduate nursing curriculum. Recently, one curriculum change that our department has made was to make the standardized nursing exams count towards the student’s course grade. Each semester, students are required to take standardized exams in each nursing course, for example, OB, PEDS, medical-surgical nursing, psychiatric nursing, and pharmacology. The standardized exams are written by ERI world.
In previous years, students would not study for these standardized exams because they did not count toward their grade, and the scores were below average.Now, each standardizes exam counts 5% toward the student’s grade. If the student passes it on the first attempt, he/she will earn 5 points, on the second attempts 3 points, and third attempt 1 point. If the student does not pass on the third attempt, he/she will receive zero points. Now, the students take these exams very seriously, and they study hard for them. I teach OB, and I have an in class review for this exam. In addition, students can log onto ERI world and download review sessions to their pod cast and take practice quizzes.
There are a few faculty member who thought this policy seems too harsh, but I have seen a huge improvement in the amount of studying that the students are doing to prepare for this exam. I feel the more students study for a course the better, and hopefully this change in our curriculum will help our NCLEX results return to where they were two years ago.
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Have you revised your curriculum to reflect that content since adopting it as a measure of learning in your program? That's an important step, I feel, and is the first question I would ask as an external evaluator. Just something to think about...
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