If you are someone interested in nursing and looking for accreditation, the NCLEX PN test is for you. It is also quite suitable because of its affiliation with individual State Boards of Nursing. The full form of the exam abbreviation is the National Council Licensure Examination for Practical Nurses. It not only certifiesthe nurses who are qualified enough to practice, but also helps protect hospitals and general public from inexperienced staff and unserious medical practitioners along with regulating the nursing community within the respective state.
Test Format
The NCLEX-PN exam is loosely based on the principle of meeting client needs. For this purpose, there are four major categories and eight subcategories. While many other nursing programs talk of separate departments, the NCLEX PN gives deeper insight of the nursing program as a contestant is supposed to pass through all of the content. Everyone is required to answer a minimum of 85 questions, or they may choose to answer as much as 205 questions. 25 separate medical experimental questions are also part of the whole exam. However, they do not contribute or take away from your score. This is a test bank for future exams to check the questions’ viability.
The Prepaway NCLEX-PN is a Computer Adaptive Test (CAT), which means that it will be taken digitally and will follow a course based on your response to each question. The system also ensures, based on your skill level, which the questions popping up do not turn out to be too easy or too hard.
Timeline
Specific questions do not have any particular time limit allotted to them. However, the candidatesare expected to complete the whole exam within 5 hours. This time would also be inclusive of a tutorial that comes in the beginning. Breaks come at the intervals of 2 hours and over 90 minutes respectively, and they are optional.
There are a few specific pointers that tell about the end of the test. The students may choose to end their examif they have completed the minimum required number of questions, which is 85, or the maximum, which is 205, or anywhere in between. Otherwise, the time limit of 5 hours is to be used.
Passing Score
The first thing that you need to understand is that there are no absolute scores that you get to see for your performance. The result of the exam is very simple. All it requires is one word: either pass or fail. The results however cannot be checked online. They can only be obtained through your respective board of nursing in 2 to 6 weeks of the test.
Not everyone can get everything right at the first attempt. Failing gets you a closer look at your performance and helps you evaluate what topics caused a problem. Start by fixing these topics, and then moving towards covering the whole syllabus again. Retesting is permitted 45 days after the initial test.
Registration Procedure
Once you are nearing the end of your nursing school, you receive two applications. One of them is the application for the NCLEX-PN test. The registration process involves submitting the completed forms, application, and license fees to the nursing school.
A total of $200 has required for the test, as of now. Additional fees are further decided by each specific boards of nursing in a particular state. Registering in Massachusetts however requires coming through your jurisdiction. Once all of that is done, you will be receiving a postcard with your receipt of registration. The scheduling happens only after you receive your ATT or authorization to the exam. Once you have the ATT, you can easily complete the registration process at the Pearson VUE website.
Client Needs
As we talked earlier about the basic principle that the NCLEX-PN is centered on, there are four major client needs that the exam focuses on. Let us move on and discuss them here.
1.Safe and Effective Care Environment
The two concepts that fall under this umbrella are those of coordinated care, as well as safety and infection control. Roughly 20-22 percent of the questions of the exam come from the coordinated care section. A lot of topics and actions come under this subcategory, some of which include Client Rights, Establishing Priorities, Ethical Practice, and Resource Management. As for safety and infection control, around 15 percent of the test is formed by questions that involve practices like accident prevention, handling of hazardous materials, incident reporting, use of safety devices and other such stuff.
2.Health Promotion and Maintenance
The 2nd major category in terms of client needs is that of health promotion and maintenance. When it comes to what portion of the exam they comprise of, they cover nearly 8-10 percent of the whole test. The topics that come under discussion over here include data collection techniques, aging process, disease prevention, high-risk behaviors, immunizations, lifestyle choices, and health promotion programs.
3.Psychosocial Integrity
As anyone would be concerned when getting checked by a nurse, psychosocial integrity of a nurse is very much questioned. The topics being covered in this part include mental health concepts, stress management, grief and loss, coping mechanisms, therapeutic communication, crisis intervention, and end of life care.
4.Physiological Integrity
The last of client needs is physiological integrity. It further comes under the umbrella of four subcategories. These include basic care and comfort, pharmacological and parental therapies, reduction of risk potential, and physiological adaptation.
Conclusion
As you can see, the NCLEX-PN test includes a lot of things you need to know. Therefore, thorough exam preparation is the best option to explore all required details. There are many online platforms that offer different practice tests and exam dumps to make your preparation process effective. You can also try to take theNCLEX-PN practice exam to find out what questions are waiting for you in the actual test.
