Chapter 12
Many of you have years of nursing experience in your home country. Now you are preparing for the NCLEX-PN® exam so you can be licensed to practice your profession in the United States. Because of Kaplan’s extensive experience preparing nurses who were educated in other countries, we are very aware of the special issues that you face when trying to pass the NCLEX-PN® exam. Your special concerns will be discussed in this chapter.
Many nurses educated outside of the United States have not had the experience of taking a test that combines objective multiple-choice questions with alternate-format questions. Your testing experience may have been limited to oral exams or writing answers to essay and short answer questions. Multiple-choice tests are used in the United States because they measure knowledge more objectively and are easier to administer to large groups of people. In order to pass the NCLEX-PN® exam, you must demonstrate that you are a safe and effective nurse by correctly answering predominantly multiple-choice questions along with alternate-format question types, including those that require you to select more than one response, fill in the blank, or identify a “hot spot” (a specific area on a picture or graph).