Saturday, October 07, 2006 Talk back: Nursing exam fiasco By Romulo I. Tan, MD
(This letter is addressed to Nini B. Cabaero)
While pre-qualifiers for CGFNS exams should have certification from the Professional Regulations Commission (PRC) according to the USA Nursing Board, there are 18 states in the US that doesn’t require CGFNS.
US Immigration processes petitions upon request of the hospitals even if these involve those that are Nclex-certified only.
An Nclex is a specific screening and qualifying exam for a nurse that intends to work in a particular state.
If a nurse is California Nclex-certified and intends to work in New York, he/she has to get reciprocity from the other state, plus additional fee and an additional waiting period of 3-4 months.
CGFNS is needed while an agency looks for a place for a nurse in a state where CGFNS is a qualification. But they work not as a regular nurse, unlike those that are Nclex-certified, who immediately get regular work status.
Non-CGFNS states don’t really care whether a nurse is PRC-certified or not. Perhaps, these states don’t even care about the alleged cheating in the June 2006 exams.
Work efficiency is the requirement for a nurse that works in US hospitals. Some nurses even get cut off after one day of work if they commit errors.
As for the leakage, the cheaters and the person in authority that facilitated the cheating should be punished and jailed before Malacañang orders a retake of the exams.
For those claiming that US hospitals are strict in processing nurses who passed the June 2006 nursing board exams, I think those are just conjectures or the practice is done by only a few hospitals.
A California-based recruitment agency affiliated with 40 hospitals in the US and which operates a nursing registry even commented that if others won’t process the June 2006 batch, they will.
