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Wednesday, April 1, 2009

NCLEX REQUIREMENTS

Hello guys and hello to my fellow nurses. I guess most of you, while waiting for a chance to work at a hospital or clinic for that matter, are either taking up certifications and seminars to hon nursing knowledge and skills or reviewing for the NLCEX, CGFNS examns or IELTS/TOEFL.

Some say that it would be better to take up these qualifying exams for working abroad while the knowledge from school and the local nursing board review are still fresh from our minds (this is true, I suppose). Whatever the reasons are, it really depends on the timeline that you set for yourself on your nursing profession.

I am not alone in saying that most of the second-coursers that have already passed the local board prefer to take up the exams for abroad first and take the "shortcut" method of gaining a few months to a year of experience working in hospitals. Most of us (that includes me) do not have the luxury of time that the younger generation of nurses have. We did give up adequate-paying jobs to take up nursing for the bright promise of going abroad and earn more.

Well, this is not actually the reason why I am writing this blog for the week. Some nurses have asked for my assistance on how to apply for the NCLEX exam. They were asking if ever I hired an agency to assist me in processing my requirements.
There is no need actually to hire an agency to process the NCLEX requirements. The steps are just too easy and all that one actually should do is to download the forms and read the instructions from the appropriate Board of Nursing website in the US state where you are planning to qualify as a USRN.

If you want information on how to apply, here are some of the useful guidelines:

1) Visit www.ncsbn.org. There you will find at the upper right hand side a dropdown box with the words Quick Links. Click the dropdown box and select Boards of Nursing. This will bring you to a map of the US. Here you have two options; you click on the map of the state where you are planning to apply as a USRN or there is another dropdown box below the map where you would choose the state. Upon choosing the state, the page will show you the contact details of the state where you are applying for. It will also give you the state's board of nursing website.

2) Click on the state's board of nursing website and you will find there the information you need to be able to apply for a the examination

For my part, I applied for the NCLEX exam for the state of California. What I did was to go to California state's board of nursing website which is www.rn.ca.gov..There you will find a section "Information About" and below that you will find a subsection "Applying". Under "Applying" choose "Licensure by Examination". Download all the forms for NCLEX exam application by clicking on the link "Application for Licensure by Examination". Print all of them and fill them up. There are also forms there that will be filled up by the College of Nursing where you graduated.

After downloading the forms, go back to the previous page and click on the link "requests" In here, you will request for a finger print card which you will also be submitting to the board of nursing. Fill up the form and click submit. In about two weeks you will receive the finger print card directly from the board of nursing.

Request then for a copy of the Transcript of Records from your school registrar marked with the purpose NCLEX. Have your diploma photocopied and have it authenticated from the school registrar. Upon getting the TOR, go to your College of Nursing and submit the TOR and the forms that they will be filling up. Asked also for a copy of the RLE documents/form that contains the hours of your clinical and community exposires (the one you submitted to PRC when you applied for the Phil. Board Exams for Nurses).

Upon receipt of the finger print card from the mail, fill up the card and go to the local office of the NBI and ask for assistance in putting your fingerprints on the card. NBI personnel are the only persons authorized to assist you in fingerprinting.

Meanwhile please go over the downloaded documents and you will see the amount to be paid to the Board of Nursing. This amount covers the cost of checking the documents and granting eligibility to take the exams. You can also read there that you can issue a check to pay for the application. Follow the instructions given on what to write on the check.

One of the requirements also asked is a photocopy of your country's nursing license (local board exams passer) If you are a local board passer and are still waiting for your local license, you can actually send a certified copy of your board rating and a written explanation why you still do not have a license. If you haven't taken your local board exams yet, you can also write to inform them that such is the case.

You can also find a checklist from the downloaded documents the needed documents that you will be submiting. TAKE NOTE that the school documents (the one filled up by your college of nursing, TOR, RLE form) is assumed to be sent to the State's Board of Nursing DIRECTLY from the school. This is what the Board of Nursing requires. If this is not possible, make sure that you ask for an envelope with a letterhead of the school with a signature of the school registrar, enclosed the school documents inside it. DO NOT include any other documents. Send this through a courier e.g. LBC, DHL, UPS, Fedex, for faster and safe delivery.

For the other set of documents (the other forms, check, fingerprint card, copy of license, copy of diploma, etc), you will be sending these separately. Do not fold these documents. Make sure you are sending this set of documents about the same time or within a few days apart of sending the school documents in a separate pack.

Once sent, it will take a maximum of 5 months for your eligibility to be received. For my part it took only a month for my eligibility to be received.

Once you receive your eligibility, you can then schedule your exam for NCLEX. You can then visit www.pearsonvue.com and register an account. You will then fill up a form online to get an Authority to Test (ATT). Fill up the credit card information. You will be paying $200 for this. Before, it usually takes a few weeks to receive the ATT (through mail) but with the advent of the internet, you can actually receive it in a few minutes to a couple of hours. Make sure that you print the ATT upon receiving it through email. You will then browse through the site and lokk for the available schedules for NCLEX examinations. Upon getting and deciding on the examination date that is available, you then will call a hotline number to speak to a customer service representative. Keep your ATT handy since the representative will be verifying some information from you . He/she will be getting again your credit card information for the payment of an additional $150 for scheduling the exam.

I hope this helps you guys. I suggest if you are planning to take NCLEX review classes, make sure that you have already submitted the documents to the board of nursing and will just be waiting for the eligibility to arrive so that you will be free from the hassles of processing the requirements.

Good luck! Till my next blog..PEACE!

3 comments:

  1. hi , this is Jen from Philippines, I was planning to take the NCLEX-RN in hongkong..is it a requirements that i should be a registered nurse first here in the Philippines before I can take the nclex-rn exam? thanks---

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  2. thank u for such an informative blog..i have a very important question.. what are the other requirements on applying for NCLEX? kelangan ba TOEFL or IELTS passer ka? required din ba na CGFNS passer ka din? kc i read na required pa ang mga yan? pls reply asap. thank u. God bless.

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