Thursday, October 1, 2009

I'm studying to write the NCLEX

If you were wondering why I'm not doing more stuff yet like museums, local attractions, and exploring the city, it's because I am studying to write the NCLEX exam. NCLEX stands for National Council Licensure EXamination.

It's part of the nurse licensing procedure here in the States, and I'm working at getting my California nurse's license in case I want to stay and work a while. It's a big comprehensive nursing exam, and it's said to be very hard. It goes into a ridiculous amount of detail, and requires a lot of memorization of facts and numbers that real-world nurses just look up as needed, or that are specific to a specialty and are never used much except by nurses in that specialty.

I'm giving myself a month to prepare for it, and plan to write it around November 2nd. So, until then, that's my priority, studying for that and getting some other documentation in order. There's a lot of re-learning involved; there are some things I'm really good at and some that I have almost completely forgotten, as I have not worked in every area of nursing in the 20 years that I have been out of school. I have a good varied experience though, and that helps a bit.

I'm still doing minor exploring by going for walks and bike rides, and just living life in a different country is interesting enough for me for now. I figure once I have the paperwork submitted and the exam written, there will be lots of time to explore and do fun and educational things while I wait for the bureaucrats to do their part, so I might as well just concentrate on getting my part of the licensing requirements out of the way.

2 comments:

  1. Nancy is back in school mode! Would be interesting to let us know what the differences are between American and Canadian nurses (training, responsibility, certification, etc).

    -Eric

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  2. That really sucks that you have to write the NCLEX, it's a shame the US doesn't have a reciprocity agreement. Good luck with your studying :)

    Paula

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