Mary E. McDonald

I graduated from Boston College School of Nursing in 1969 and have been a Brooklyn, New York resident since 1971. My nursing career included both acute hospital care and public health nursing until 1976 when I received a Masters in Nursing Education from New York University and accepted my first position as a nurse educator. Throughout my career in nursing education, I was focused on developing trustworthy student assessments. I perfected my skills in item writing and test development as the coordinator of testing at an associate degree program and as a consultant at the National League for Nursing.

In 1998 I received another Masters degree from New York University, this time in Applied Psychology with a major in measurement. I went on to open my own business, Educational Assessment Strategies, LLC, in 1999. The focus of my company was to assist nursing faculty to write critical thinking items for their classroom tests. Since then, I have presented more than 100 test and item development workshops to nursing faculty across the country. I am recognized nationally as an expert in test development and writing critical thinking test questions. My textbook for faculty, The Nurse Educator's Guide to Assessing Learning Outcomes, is widely used in graduate programs for Nurse Educators. I am currently writing the 4th edition of the textbook.

My current goal is to provide potential NCLEX examinees with practice exams that will prepare them for the licensing exam. The NCLEX Success Coach series is designed to offer nursing students and graduates high quality, realistic practice exams that will actually prepare them for the NCLEX.

The current plan is to have 13 books that present exams based on system disorders with questions that require critical thinking. The tests will include the NCLEX Client Needs and will use the item formats that are used on the actual test. The exams will be accompanied by detailed rationales to allow candidates to identify their strengths and weaknesses so they can realistically prepare for the NCLEX.

I am convinced that test anxiety and lack of experience with critical thinking questions prevents qualified candidates from passing NCLEX. My objective is to help qualified candidates overcome the hurdle of passing NCLEX and achieve the goal of becoming a professional nurse.