TALLAHASSEE, FL – “Complete frustration” were frequent comments thrown around by recent test takers of the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX), hoping to obtain nursing licensure.
“The test was complete bullcrap!” spewed Kerry Weathers. “I took review courses and bought several study guides, and about 70% of the test wasn’t from anything that I had studied.”
“Very few of the questions were clinically relevant,” steamed Mark Boulderton. “And the few questions that were relevant had the most outlandish answers. For instance one question asked what drink is best for a burn patient. The correct answer was eggnog! WTF!”
A memo accidentally sent out to the wrong party from an NCLEX test question writer, blatantly informed the public that questions and answers are intentionally picked from esoteric topics that have no or very little clinical relevance.
An excerpt from the memo states, “It would be too easy to just write questions on the material that people are instructed to study. If we did that, the test would be much easier and the reputation of the test would falter. The NCLEX is a successful tool because we scare the excrement out of examiners with how hard our test is. Nobody would study anything if it was easy or on topics they actually looked at.”
Another trick that test writers make is to have 2 or even 3 correct answers for a question. Asking ambiguous questions and using the phrase “best choice” or “best treatment” help accomplish this goal.
Further into the detailed memo, it states, “Making people choose between 3 subjectively correct answers adds another fun element to the test. We want to see who can perform under extremely frustrating conditions. Isn’t that what nursing is all about anyways?“
In a last desperate move to completely mess with people’s minds, the test can cut off at 75 questions or go all the way up to 265 questions.
“The system is 100% random, but we don’t advertise that,” said NCLEX board member Allison Crafter. “The mental games after the test are amazing once people start talking about how many questions they had. I love to grab a bag of popcorn and sift through comments on nursing forums!”
