Indian Hospital Chain Introduces Online Testing of Nursing Skills

The Wockhardt Hospitals Group, a leading Indian chain, has introduced an online testing of nursing skills.

The Wockhardt Nursing Skill Test (NST), launched in association with Careersindia, would seek to measure the basic domain knowledge of prospective nurses seeking employment with the group.

Under the NST, any nurse seeking employment at Wockhardt Hospitals across the country can go to the nearest designated Web Centre log on to http://www.careersindia.com/nursing and answer 70 multiple choice questions in 47 minutes on topics like Basic Nursing Skills, Medical Surgical Nursing, Child Health Nursing, Mental Health Nursing, Midwifery and spoken language evaluation.

On completion of the test, candidates are provided immediate access to their 'Individual Assessment Report'. This report is designed to provide candidates with module-wise percentile scores. The percentile scores reflect the candidate's basic knowledge and performance in the test with respect to the required areas. Based on the scores, candidates will either enter the next round of the interview process or be dropped. A photograph of every candidate taking the test is taken by the web centre and attached to the report which ensures the security and authority of the process.

"With our rapid expansion across the country, we are currently recruiting more than 200 nurses each month out of the 2,000 candidates that are screened by our HR team. The NST process will ensure that nurses do not have to travel across geographical locations to go through the interview process which will now start only after the NST clears the candidates for the next round," said Vishal Bali, CEO & MD, Wockhardt Hospitals Group.

Developed in association with Careersindia, a company which has made a mark in the area of online workforce assessments in industry, the NST has been compiled by experts in nursing, doctors and language professionals and validated by practitioners from the Wockhardt Hospitals Group. Across the country, Wockhardt Hospitals have tied up with more than 3,000 web centers where the test can be taken by the candidates.

"The NST test score will now be the foundation of our nurse recruitment process. Currently, our team spends 40 minutes with each candidate to assess their basic skills through a physical interview process and many candidates are dropped for lack of basic knowledge. Through this process we will not only be able to screen the number of candidates across the country, but it also helps candidates save their time and expense of traveling to states, where we have our hospitals" said Kumar Krishnaswamy, Group Head - HR, Wockhardt Hospitals Group.

Careersindia has taken the lead in the past to successfully design, develop and deploy online assessments for individual's abilities and behavioural competence for various verticals such as ITES, financial services, insurance, retail and manufacturing sectors, reports Express Healthcare.

“We believe that NST, which has been developed after several months of research, will mark the beginning of a new era in talent assessment and evaluation for healthcare industry. Having successfully assessed thousands of candidates in various industry segments, we are confident that our expertise in online testing, which is integrated into NST will provide immense benefits to the hiring process of the nurses in the country. We have no doubt that the Wockhardt NST will become an industry benchmark for recruitment of nurses in other hospitals across the country," said R Kannan, Managing Director, Careersindia.

More than 30,000 nurses graduate from various nursing colleges and schools across India each year and seek employment at hospitals all over the country.

Source-Medindia
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