Reviewing and revising the national examination for registered nurses would help address a nursing shortage, Minister of Health and Welfare Hsueh Jui-yuan (薛瑞元) said yesterday.
The Ministry of Examination on Thursday last week announced a revision to the exam, with health workers’ groups criticizing the move.
The ministry said that the exam’s “preclinical medicine” content would be reduced to 10 percent from 20 percent.
Photo: CNA
The National Taiwan University Hospital Union in a statement said that the announcement was an ambush that left frontline health workers speechless.
The nursing shortage is due to a working environment that is untenable for registered nurses, not because too few people are passing the national exam, the union said.
The government should halt the policy, urge hospitals to improve working environments and address personnel shortages, and reconsider the national exam revision after gathering more opinions from frontline workers, it said.
The ministry on Sunday said that the revision was made after consulting professionals and specialists at a meeting on Oct 16, which was attended by representatives from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Taiwan Nurses’ Association, nursing education institutes, clinical facilities and the ministry’s Board of Examiners.
The main purpose of the revision is to enhance the links between education, exams and employment to ensure that those who pass the exam have the core abilities needed for to be a registered nurse, it said.
Hsueh yesterday said that the nursing shortage is caused by many factors.
Revising the content of the national exam for registered nurses might boost the pass rate and help ease personnel issues, he said.
The exam covers five subjects, which previously were weighted at 20 percent each, he said.
However, those who averaged 60 points passed the exam, but data in the past three years showed that average scores in the “preclinical medicine” section among those who passed were 40 to 50 points, he said.
Even test takers with a master’s degree in nursing averaged only 50 points in the section, Hsueh said, adding that the other four sections did not have such low scores, so the exam was reviewed.
The review should be comprehensive, including the formulation of questions and the question pool, he said.
However, reforms take time, so the examination ministry decided to adjust the weighting of the section as a short-term fix, he said.
Hopefully, the revision would solve the problem of some exam candidates being blocked from becoming a registered nurse because of a low score in one section, he said, adding that the change does not mean other issues in nursing would be neglected.
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