Nursing Psychometric Testing

turtle1990

I am hoping to apply as a mature student for Nursing this year, i am a bit worried about the Psychometric test has anyone done it? what was it like etc etc any bit of advice is welcome

paperclip2

There's a link to the nursing careers booklet from An Board Altranais that goes through all the info on the application process here http://www.nursingboard.ie/en/careers.aspx
Pages 23 to 31 cover details related to mature applicants including the timetable for interviews and topics covered in the written assessment.

A good general book on psychometric tests is: 'The Ultimate Psychometric Test Book' by Mike Byron

Laydee

I did it 2 years ago, I believe there has been another section added in since then. I completed a prep day with career services http://www.careerservices.ie/ and this greatly settled any nerves I had about not being able for the test. They just go through it section by section but it helped. It cost about €150 then. You should look up the link Paperclip2 provided, it will give you the info you're looking for.

Spud5467

Hey, I did the test last year and I'm happy to say I did well (top 4%) and I'm now doing Children's and General Nursing at DCU. Which I love and was definitely the right choice for me

Now for the test, I used two books to help me practice, the one listed above and the other was called something like How to pass postgraduate psychometric tests, again by Mike Byron. Both of which are sitting at home doing nothing so if anybody wants them could sort something out

The tests are simple enough but the difficultly comes in speed, they are structured in a way that makes in hard to finish them on time. My biggest advise would be practice your maths and english. You have to be able to add things up almost instantly and be confident in your answers. So practice your times tables, when you go shopping add up what your buying in your head. Basically just do as much as you can!

Unless the test has changed there are four parts;
Personality (which I was completely honest on but someone did raise the point after how would a computer know you were fibbing? Questions like; have you done volunteer work, worked in a nursing home etc. Suppose just reading what bord altranais puts out, not too much to worry about here)

Maths - Questions here are sequences, so 5 10 _ 20 25. Definitely the hardest section for time. There's tricks like learning the squared and cubed numbers. The books teach you there are only so many patterns sequences can follow so once you learn them your grand. Practice early with these because when you first start they are very hard but get significantly easy with time

English - Again questions follow one pattern throughout. An example of this would be:
Cow is to Milk as Bee is to: A. Hive B. Swarm C. Honey D. Nest
You have to relate them obviously and they do get harder so practice again. Read books and papers etc, make a conscious habit of marking the words you dont understand and looking them up (Dictionary.com has an app for smart phones so no excuse)

Last session was nursing scenarios. So: Your a midwife and have just finish delivering Ms. Smith's baby. While on your break, friends of Ms Smith come over asking how she is doing, how do you respond?: A. Follow Hospital procedure and never reveal private information B: Ask them for a coffee in exchange for information. C: Give them your security badge Tell them everything and take them up after your break is over.

Kinda waffled on there but hopefully can be of help to somebody and if there's any questions free feel to ask. Don't underestimate the competition because its extremely tight. One mark could be the different between fulfilling your dreams or not. Oh and probably to most important piece of advise, something which I didnt do and I definitely lost marks because of it:

Take a WATCH in with you!!! You will lose track of time and they just announce the test is over, been very strict if you try and scramble to sneak the last few questions in. Set your alarm for say 30 seconds before the test finishes, that why If you haven't finished you can just guess the remaining questions as there is no negative marking.

Good luck to anyone doing the test


And about the Prep day, I didn't do it and neither did a friend of mine who finished in the top 50 (1600+ people took the exam). Decide yourself, be good to familiarize yourself with the test but sure publicjobs send you one and its the same format.

paperclip2

Great info Spud. Thanks. I'm going to keep that on file.

viruta

Hiya!!! Thank you so much for the info that you provided!!!last year I did test, I did it "fine" in the numerical and English,but I did it terrible...terrible wrong in the Job simulation,snif snif,could you give me some advice in relation with this questions and answers....help,help,help .Im not sure if I need to show myself very confident or maybe...not too confident :rolleyes:!!Thank youuuuuuuu

Spud5467

viruta wrote: »

Hiya!!! Thank you so much for the info that you provided!!!last year I did test, I did it "fine" in the numerical and English,but I did it terrible...terrible wrong in the Job simulation,snif snif,could you give me some advice in relation with this questions and answers....help,help,help .Im not sure if I need to show myself very confident or maybe...not too confident :rolleyes:!!Thank youuuuuuuu

Hey Viruta,

If you have sample questions I can answer them for you But the advice I would say it that if your a student nurse your main responsibility is to Report to staff nurses, know your own limits and confidentiality. Oh to follow hospital policies!

I wouldn't take it hard for the job simulation, your going to college to learn the job! Was my weakest section too.

MollyMurphyD

Hi - does anyone know when the notice about this years exam will be available??

paperclip2

MollyMurphyD wrote: »

Hi - does anyone know when the notice about this years exam will be available??

Details will be on www.publicjobs.ie on the 21st March. To access it you will need your CAO number. Did you get an email from PAS last Friday with the orange booklet? If you didn't you need to get in touch with them at maturecode12@pas.ie by this Friday the 16th.

MollyMurphyD

Thanks a mill for that - I didn't hear anything so I'll drop them an email now

freddieelmo

Hi

I sat the Nursing Aptitude last year. I scored very high in the numerical verbal and job simulation, but I scored extremely low in the personality.

Does anyone have any tips on where I could have possibly went wrong? I went to the career services day course for the aptitude where they said that you can tell some untruths.. I think my lies may have overlapped some questions and I answered some questions differently.

Any advice on this secion would be great , from people who passed ?

thanks so much .. I have applied again this year and am determined to get it.

C