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Course repeaters make up bulk of failures at Nurses’ Exam – Health Minister

Jun 28, 2014 News

Minister of Health Dr. Bheri Ramsaran has said that the large percentage of nurses failing the Professional Nursing Programme examination is as a result of those who are repeaters.  But there has been improvement across the board in the different sections of the examination papers – four written papers and a practical examination, he said.
The recent sitting of the examination saw a total of 19 individuals repeating the course for a third time. They had failed the last exams and had again failed the very first one.
Minister Ramsaran said that the four recognised Nursing Schools in Guyana have shown a lot of improvement in individual areas. He said that this can be broken down to 83 per cent in functional nursing paper one,  and 27 per cent in paper two; 61 per cent passes in clinical nursing paper one and 70 per cent in paper two; along with 79 per cent in practicals. However, when the grades were combined it showed that some individuals were strong in one area but weak in another resulting in them failing.
The Charles Roza Nursing School in Linden has shown some improvement. The results showed a 92 per cent pass in functional nursing paper one as opposed to 60 per cent in 2013; and 46 per cent in paper two as opposed to 20 per cent last year also.
In the area of clinical nursing there have been improvements as well; paper one saw 50 per cent of the students passing as against 23 per cent last year and paper two saw a 72 per cent success as against 30 per cent last year.
This school also showed improvement in the practical exam resulting in an 83 per cent pass as opposed to 57 per cent last year.
The New Amsterdam Nursing School saw 100 per cent passes in functional nursing paper one and 49 per cent in paper two, while in clinical nursing it saw 46 per cent passes in paper one, 76 per cent in paper two and 46 per cent in practicals.
The majority of failing students came from the Georgetown School of Nursing with the poorest area being a 12 per cent pass in functional nursing paper two. According to the Minister, this resulted in the overall pass percentage being this low as it is.
He then explained that the public sector allows individuals to re-sit the exam and it is those persons who have once again performed poorly causing the overall percentage of nurses passing the examination to significantly drop.
The Minister said that the results of the private nursing schools are usually good because these enterprises pre-screen their students before allowing them to sit the exams.
He noted that the Ministry will be taking remedial action, one of which will be the consideration of allowing persons to re-sit a paper after failing once as the policy currently allows.
The reason for this, according to the Minister, is because he feels that these persons are aware of having a second chance so they do not put all their efforts into taking the exams.
The Minister however congratulated the St. Joseph’s Nursing School for doing extremely well at the exams, scoring 100 per cent passes in all of the written exams and 67 per cent in the practicals.
Director of Health Sciences Education, Wilton Benn, said that there are efforts being made to align training with regional bodies.
He noted that the fairly recent adjustments to the curriculum can also be one of the contributing factors to the high number of failures. He added that there has been improvement in the curriculum and also the recognisation of weak areas. (GINA)

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