Quebec worried about plan to recruit nurses as exam failures pile up

With the Quebec government striving to recruit more nurses, especially abroad, it is expressing concern about the number of students failing the written exam from the provincial nurses order.

On Wednesday Luc Mathieu, the president of the order which is known by its French acronym OIIQ, met with a trio of key cabinet ministers to address the high failure rate that may be undermining Quebec's recruitment plans.

Health Minister Christian Dubé, Treasury Board president Sonia LeBel and Higher Education Minister Pascale Déry took part in the meeting.

In a statement to Radio-Canada, LeBel said she and her colleagues are taking stock of the situation.

"We reminded the order the exam should validate nurses' skills, not act as a barrier preventing access to the profession," said LeBel.

"At the end of the meeting, the order committed to collaboration, and we will monitor the situation closely with the office of professions."

Speaking with Radio Canada this morning, LeBel called the passing rates "very low" and "very worrisome."

The minister also said she was "impatiently" awaiting the recommendations from the Quebec's commissioner of professions on training future nurses.

"The Minister of Higher Education and CEGEPs are ready to address these issues, if necessary," she said. "We are ready to give them support."

Foreign-trained nursing students who wrote the most recent exam in March 2023 passed at a rate of 37 per cent, an increase compared to 19.5 per cent last September.

Within the next two years, Quebec plans to finish training about 1,000 students from Africa. The $65-million program was launched by the health minister in February in 2022.

The pass rate for all first-time candidates for the March 2023 exam was 53 per cent, slightly above the 51.4 per cent in September 2022.

Over 5,000 nursing students have written both exams in the last nine months.

A report by Quebec's commissioner of professions, André Gariépy, found issues with the validity and reliability of the exam.

Gariépy concluded an unjustified raising of the passing grade resulted in failing 500 students, a number Dubé said the province's health-care system could not afford to lose.

Radio-Canada has learned that the commissioner's office has so far received more than 200 complaints from students who failed one of the two exams.

Last week, Mathieu confirmed a new version of the exam will be used starting in the spring of 2024.

But news of a new exam may come too late for some students trying to enter the profession. Clémence Fortin is one of those students who has given up on a career in nursing.

On Monday, Fortin told Radio-Canada's Tout un matin she and her fellow students had been warned to prepare for the difficulty of the exam.

"During the first year of CEGEP, we got warned and scared about the exam," she said. "But I didn't think it would be that difficult," she said.