This study aimed to analyse the test contents of the national examination for the registered nurses (NERN) over 3 years from 1991 to 1993 in Korea. In recent years in Korea, the MCQ(multiple choice question) has been showing to be a highly recognized method for assessing the qualification of registered nurses. Unfortunately, nursing faculties have found NERN had some bad MCQs through having evaluation workshop for Some MCQs often provide so many unwriting clues which become a bias of the results, and some items fell into the category of the lower level of educational taxonomy such as isolated recall a fact or data. Frequently the stems of the questions are ambigous, unclear, disputable, esoterical or trivial. Considering those fallacies of the national examination, it is very critical to review the test items to see whether it is of high quality, is more fair, reliable and objective in depth. Therefore, this study was done to provide data for the improvement of the test contents as well as the teachers's assessment skill. For this study, the ad hoc committe was composed of 16 members, including 5 education board members of Korean Academic Nurses Association and 11 nursing faculty members. This committe had one day panal discussion and filled the checklist for this study. The porcess of analysing data was held over 10 times during 1992-1994. The analysis focussed on educational taxonomy such as cognitive domain(kowledge), psychmotor domain (skill), affective domain(attitude) and the level of learning such as recall, understanding, problems solving, and learning area of theory and practice, and the learning content categorised by nursing process and disease process. The test analysed using difficulty index and the structure of the test items was analysed. The conclusions and suggestion as follows: 1. In learning area, the average ratio of the theory and practice was 1: 1.1 which was less than 1: 2 suggested by Korean National Health Institute, and the ratio was differnt by the 8 learing sujects of nursing. 2. In category of the educational taxonomy, the knowledge domain was emphasized mostly(79. 7%), the skill domain was 14.9%, and the attitude domain was 5.4% only. 3. In the level of learning, generally, the test items of the level of recall(45.5%) and the understanding (46.3%) were covered almost and the problem solving was 8.1%. 4. In the learning contents, generally, the test items related to nursing process was 67.2% and that of disease process was 32.8%. However, this proportion was different by the 8 leaning subjects. Even though the nursing diagnosis has been emphasized in nursing curricula recently, the test items of this was identified very few. 5. In the structure of the test item, some were not clear, incorrect grammar, unclear description and some have clues to answer. 6. In the item analysis, the non-acceptable level of the difficulty indes(means too easy) was 65.7%, and the acceptable level was 33.9%. Considering the reseults we would like to suggest the followings, 1. Since the test items of knowledge domain was dominant, the test items of the practice domain and attitude domain should be emphasized more. 2. The regular review and analysis of NERN should be arranged in order to improve the quality of the test items which will give influence to the nursing education positively.

For producing large numbers of professional nurses who could manage 21th century's human health, it is necessary to review the direction of registered nursed' national examination which evaluates the nursing education and is granted a licence. For adapting to social expectation of the nurse, we have to nurture the nurses' problem solving capability in clinical setting. Seven divisions of Korean Academy of Nursing suggested clinical competency according to their categories. This paper was presented in the workshop for setting up direction of registered nurses' national examination. We expect that this paper would be more refine and confirm through reviewing subdivisions' learning objectives and discussing clinical minimum level of competence contents with clinical leaders.