What is a Substantially Equivalent Competency (SEC) Assessment?
The SEC assessment will assess your professional knowledge, skills and abilities. You may be asked to have an assessment in any (or all) of the following areas:
- General Medical-Surgical Nursing
- Maternal Child Health
- Pediatric Child Health
- Mental Health / Psychiatric Nursing
The SEC uses the following four strategies developed at Mount Royal College in Calgary, Alberta to evaluate the competencies of registered nurses:
Written Diagnostic Exam
The written diagnostic exam includes both multiple choice and short answer questions
that will test the general nursing knowledge required of professional nurses in
BC.
- The medical surgical exam is six (6) hours.
- Each focused diagnostic exam is three (3) hours.
Triple Jump Assessment
Problem solving and critical thinking skills are tested using an assessment interview
called the Triple Jump. In the interview, candidates will be presented with a brief
client situation and asked to:
- generate hypotheses about client and nursing issues and concerns
- identify relevant data
- develop a management plan
- self-evaluate
The process will assess knowledge, problem-solving, critical thinking, organizational,
client assessment and self-evaluation skills, as well as self-directed learning abilities.
Clinical Judgment Assessment
The Clinical Judgment Assessment evaluates the ability to make sound clinical judgments in situations that are complex and have no "simple" answers. These clinical judgment situations will assess the ability to think deliberately and critically through a nursing situation, apply essential and relevant knowledge, consider possibilities and options and take reasoned, reflective and insightful decisions and actions.
Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE)
The Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) is used to assess the following knowledge and skills:
- nurse-client relationships
- critical thinking and clinical judgment skills
- health assessment and nursing skills
- ethical decision making skills
- pharmacology and pathophysiology
- rapidly changing patient situations.
This assessment is conducted in a lab setting, where a candidate will role play
the nurse and demonstrate their abilities in the care of a patient.
Self Assessment of CRNBC’s Nursing Professional Standards
Candidates will have the opportunity to provide a self-assessment of how they have
met the professional standards during nursing practice in their country of origin.
Click here for CRNBC’s Professional Standards:
***SEC Assessment Strategies and tools were developed at
Mount Royal College, in Calgary Alberta.
