The marks are in, and as they predicted, a group of English-speaking nursing students have failed their final nursing exams.
The students say a poorly-translated English exam given by the Quebec Order of Nurses is to blame.
“Everybody was saying did you notice that question, what was that? Why was there that word that doesn't make any sense,” explained McGill nursing student Gabriela Mizrahi.
The qualifying exam is written after a three-year CEGEP program, and 470 English nursing students wrote the test in question.
The order says it's surprised by the complaints because the test is subject to a fairly thorough translation process.
“It's translated by a recognized translator who is part of an order, then that version is sent to a nurse who compares the French and the English version to make sure there's coherence with the nursing field. Then the version after that is sent to another English nurse who proofreads it again,” said Chantal Lemay of the Quebec Order of Nurses.
But the students still feel wronged and launched a petition to ask the order to fix the exam and fix their marks.
“I felt like I wasn't being given a fair chance an equal opportunity to demonstrate my nursing knowledge, to show I'm competent,” said Mizrahi.
Mizrahi passed, but fellow student Kristina Beliveau didn’t.
“It means that I have to either pay $206 to see the revision of the exam or also pay $600 to redo the exam,” she said.
The Quebec Order of Nurses has taken the unusual step of meeting with the all of the English nursing schools, and they do promise to address the situation. It's not known how long the investigation will take.
“When we receive a petition as we did we take that seriously and we want to look at our procedure,” Lemay said.
“The students have suffered emotionally and financially because of this and it's not fair.”
