Filipino Nursing Herald

Canadian authorities have begun investigations of a security breach in its own nursing licensure exam in June. Questions that were part of the licensure test were leaked days before the exam was conducted, according to a report by thestar.com. Officials of the Canadian Nursing Association said only questions in the short-answer part (fill-in-the-blank) were compromised. These short-answer questions comprise 15% of the entire test, while multiple choice questions make up the rest of the day-long exam, which had 250 questions in all. Some 5,300 candidates took the nursing test, which is a requirement for licensure in Canada. **** I'm eagerly awaiting how CGFNS will react to this scandal, which strikes so much resemblance to the Philippines' own leakage controversy. Canadian authorities contend that those who passed the exam are qualified nurses, despite being scored based only on the multiple-choice portion of the test, a strategy which our own PRC employed--scoring candidates b...

I was asked a few days ago about the validity of English exam scores for Visascreen purposes. Someone had earlier claimed in a post at an Internet forum for nurses that English scores were valid up to five years if you submit it already to CGFNS. All of the information posted at the CGFNS Web site said English scores were only valid for two years, so I e-mailed CGFNS to verify if the new information was accurate. As it turned out, the new information is totally wrong. English scores were only valid for a maximum of two years, regardless of the date you file your Visascreen application. So, for example, if your IELTS scores were expiring on Aug., and your NCLEX exam is on Oct., even if you file your Visascreen application before Aug., your English scores would still become invalid and you'll have to retake the IELTS again. Here's the e-mailed response of CGFNS: Thank you for your inquiry. If an applicant's English exam expires before he takes the NCLEX exam, he will need to ...