General Information about Nurse Licensure Examinations (NLE) in the Philippines
The Nurse Licensure Examination (NLE) in the Philippines is consist of five tests, namely:
- Nursing Practice I: Basic Foundation of Nursing and Professional Nursing Practice
- Nursing Practice II: Community Health Nursing and Care of the Mother and Child
- Nursing Practice III: Care of Clients with Physiologic and Psychosocial Alterations, Part A
- Nursing Practice IV: Care of Clients with Physiologic and Psychosocial Alterations, Part B
- Nursing Practice V: Care of Clients with Physiologic and Psychosocial Alterations, Part C
Each Nursing Practice tests has 100 items, multiple choice questions.
These tests draws basic knowledge, skills and attitudes in the major subject areas such as Fundamentals of Nursing including Professional Adjustment, Maternal and Child Health Nursing, Community Health and Communicable Disease Nursing, Nursing of Adolescents, Adults and Aged and Mental Health and Psychiatric Nursing.
The following five areas of knowledge will be integrated in each of the five named subject areas above:
- Anatomy and Physiology
- Pathophysiology
- Pharmacology and Therapeutics
- Nutrition and Diet Therapy
- Parasitology and Microbiology
Nursing process serves as a framework in the nursing care of individual, families, population groups and communities in various stages of development in healthcare setting. The focus of nursing care is the promotion of health, prevention of illness, curative and rehabilitative aspects of care, alleviation of suffering, and when recovery is not possible, towards a peaceful death.
The July 2011 NLE will test competencies in relation to eleven key areas of responsibility contained in the Competency Standards of Nursing Practice in the Philippines. These key areas are categorized as follows:
I. Patient Care Competencies
1. Safe and quality nursing care
2. Communication
3. Collaboration and teamwork
4. Health education
II. Empowering Competencies
5. Legal responsibilities
6. Ethico-moral-spiritual responsibilities
7. Personal and professional development
III. Enabling Competencies
8. Management of resources and environment
9. Records management
IV. Enhancing Competencies
10. Research
11. Quality improvement