"Why can't I pass these exams?": providing individualized feedback for nursing students.

The nursing literature on examination remediation and testing feedback strategies focuses primarily on NCLEX-RN success and remediation, rather than on the course examinations taken by students throughout program curricula. Students deemed at risk for NCLEX-RN failure likely have displayed poor performance on examinations long before graduation and licensure testing. Individualized examination feedback that identifies students' specific weaknesses is superior to correct answer feedback. The feedback grid described in this article demonstrates one method of providing structured, individualized feedback using the nursing process, Bloom's taxonomy, and NCLEX-RN blueprints. The feedback grid helped students to identify patterns in knowledge gaps, determine the correct answers to missed examination questions, and improve test scores in a critical care nursing course.