After the OIIQ exam: results, what you can do meanwhile, and what happens next

You sat the exam on 29 September. Now comes a wait that nobody prepares you for, and during which a few things are worth knowing.

When the results arrive

The OIIQ sends results **within a maximum of eight weeks** of the exam date. For the September sitting, that means **by around 24 November**. You will get an email telling you the result is available in the **Mon compte** section of the OIIQ site. Everyone's result is released the same day — there is no order, no early batch, and refreshing the page in week three will not change that.

What you can do while you wait

If you hold a CEPI attestation, you are not idle. A CEPI may perform **all nursing activities except eleven**, among them: caring for a woman in labour; caring for someone whose condition is critical or requires frequent adjustment; practising in community health; initiating diagnostic or therapeutic measures under a protocol. The restrictions exist because they are the situations where a second judgement is hardest to summon quickly. Everything else is open to you, and these weeks on a unit are worth more than any revision you could do now.

If you passed

Your result opens the way to registration on the Order's roll. The permit follows registration, not the exam: finish the administrative steps promptly, because a permit that waits on a missing document is a permit that is not working for you.

If you did not

Two separate limits apply, and candidates usually know the first and not the second. **The number of attempts.** You have a **maximum of two retakes**, for **three attempts in total**. A third failure closes your candidate file automatically. **The time limit.** A CEPI has **a maximum of two years after graduating** to pass the exam. Reaching that limit closes the file automatically too — *regardless of how many attempts you have used.* That second rule is the one that catches people. Someone who graduates in May, fails in September and waits a year before trying again can run out of time while still holding attempts in hand. Count from your graduation date, not from your attempts. The Order's calendar gives **31 March 2027** as the next sitting. Confirm it in your account — that is where your convocation will arrive, and it is the only version that binds you.

The months in between

Between a result around 24 November and a sitting at the end of March, there are roughly eighteen weeks. That is a great deal more than the three or four most candidates give themselves, and the temptation is to do nothing until February. Resist it, but not by revising now. Do this instead: **Ask for your performance profile.** A failure tells you nothing on its own. Knowing which competencies fell short turns a vague setback into a list. **Work the exam that failed you, not the exam you imagined.** Fewer than one question in five is answered by remembering a fact. Read our pieces on what the blueprint actually measures and on prioritisation questions. **Start in January, not February.** Ten weeks of steady work beats four weeks of panic, and the difference is not effort — it is sleep.

Whatever the result

A second attempt is not a verdict on whether you will be a good nurse. The exam measures clinical judgement under time pressure on a particular Tuesday, which is a narrow slice of the job and not the part your patients will remember. When you are ready to start again, one full clinical situation will tell you where you stand in fifteen minutes. You can also work with other candidates preparing for the March sitting.