BHU Staff Nurse Exam Pattern, Eligibility, Important Dates

There's no Staff Nurse paper. The Nursing Officer written test, set out in BHU's notice of 28 March 2024, looks like this:

That's 72 seconds a question, and a blind four-way guess loses you marks on average.

These are the Nursing Officer rules.

Experience decides most candidatures

There's no experience-free route, unlike SGPGI, AIIMS NORCET or PGIMER, which take a B.Sc. Nursing graduate on registration alone. In the last cycle BHU found twenty-one candidates not eligible after document verification, and twenty of them failed on experience. It rejected a Community Health Officer posting under the National Health Mission, work as a Clinical Instructor or Tutor, unpaid work, hospitals under fifty beds, and experience not complete by the last date of application.

Nursing Officer selection is a written test followed by a skill test. Group B posts have no interview.

1. Online application on the Recruitment and Assessment Cell portal, then the downloaded hard copy with all enclosures to the Office of the Registrar. Both are compulsory.
2. City intimation slip and admit card from the NTA portal (bhu.ntaonline.in in the 2023-24 cycle).
3. Written test by the National Testing Agency.
4. Skill test for those shortlisted.
5. Document verification at Holkar House, BHU, Varanasi, shortlisted on the written and skill tests together.
6. Final select list.

Eligibility isn't checked until verification. Every shortlist warns that being allowed to sit confers no right to the post. In 2023-24, twenty-one candidates passed the NTA paper and a six-day skill test, travelled to Varanasi, and were then rejected.

BHU also keeps the right to withdraw a post without reason, fill later vacancies from the same candidates (so the post count can change), relax qualification, experience and age for exceptional merit, fill a post by deputation instead, and check documents at any point in service.

You can't apply for a Staff Nurse post at BHU. For Nursing Officer, when it's next advertised:

1. Fill in the form online at www.bhu.ac.in/rac before the online deadline.
2. Send the downloaded hard copy with all enclosures to the Office of the Registrar (Recruitment and Assessment Cell), Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi 221005, by the second deadline. In 2023-24 those were 22 and 27 January 2024. Incomplete applications are rejected.

Have ready: photo and signature (JPEG, up to 50 KB each), degree or diploma with mark sheets, State Nursing Council registration, category or disability certificates, and an experience certificate stating bed strength, that the work was paid, that it was hospital nursing, and exact dates.

Apply separately for each post. Nothing can be edited after final submission. Technical problems: recruitment@bhu.ac.in or 0542-2368781.

BHU recruits for itself through its Recruitment and Assessment Cell and hires the NTA to run the paper.

BHU isn't part of NORCET or the AIIMS Common Recruitment Examination. A BHU nursing post comes only from a BHU advertisement. Junior Resident, project and scheme posts from the Institute of Medical Sciences appear in general notices with fixed pay; they aren't Nursing Officer recruitment.

No Staff Nurse dates exist. The Nursing Officer cycle under Advertisement No. 20/2023-2024 ran like this:

The cycle before: Advertisement 06/2018-19, online test on 22 September 2019 (TCS iON), provisional merit list in 2020 with verification that November. Two cycles in eight years: watch the Non-Teaching Position page .

There's no Staff Nurse cut-off. For Nursing Officer:

2023-24 (Advt 20/2023-2024): BHU published roll-number shortlists with no marks, and no final list as at 12 September 2026. Document verification called exactly one candidate per post in seven of the twelve category blocks, and fewer than one per post in the other five.

2018-19 (Advt 06/2018-19): the provisional merit list for post code 4479, from the test of 22 September 2019, gave scores and category ranks:

Seventeen marks covered 362 unreserved ranks, about twenty candidates per mark. BHU has never published a qualifying percentage, a last-selected mark for 2023-24, or skill test marks.

1. Search for Nursing Officer, post codes 40002 and 40003, on the Non-Teaching Position page. A Staff Nurse search brings up aggregators, which is where the errors come from.
2. Check your experience first. One year in a fifty-bed hospital on the degree route, two on the diploma route, after qualifying and complete by the closing date.
3. Get the experience certificate right. Bed strength, paid, hospital nursing, exact dates. CHO, Clinical Instructor and Tutor posts have been rejected. Read BHU's not-eligible list with its reasons before you ask for one.
4. Check your age. The limit is 30, on a post that also wants one or two years' experience.
5. Know your post. Female has 169 of the 212 posts and Male 43. They're separate competitions.
6. Practise against the clock. Fifty questions in an hour, thirty on nursing. It rewards recall.
7. Don't guess blind. At +4/−2, leave it unless you can rule out two options.
8. Use the Indian Nursing Council curriculum. BHU publishes no syllabus.
9. Send the hard copy. The online form alone is incomplete.

• Recruitment and Assessment Cell, where every BHU recruitment starts
• Non-Teaching Position, live advertisements and notices
• Results and Archive
• Advertisement No. 20/2023-2024 (PDF)
• Scheme of the written test, 28 March 2024 (PDF)
• Not-eligible list with reasons (PDF)

Recruitment and Assessment Cell, Holkar House, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi 221005. recruitment@bhu.ac.in, 0542-2368781. For the full Nursing Officer page, see BHU Nursing Officer on this site.

Does BHU recruit Staff Nurses?

No. The entry post is Nursing Officer at Pay Level 7. Above it are Deputy Nursing Superintendent, Nursing Superintendent (Level 11) and Chief Nursing Officer (Level 12).

Why does the name Staff Nurse still come up?

It's the grade's old name, changed to Nursing Officer by the Health Ministry in March 2017.

When did BHU rename it?

No BHU order has been found. It already used Nursing Officer in Advertisement 06/2018-19.

Does a Community Health Officer posting count as experience?

Not at BHU. Three candidates were rejected last cycle for "No relevant experience. Working as Community Health Officer (CHO) in Ayushman Aarogya Mandir ... under National Health Mission".

How many posts were advertised?

212: Nursing Officer (Female) UR 70, EWS 16, SC 25, ST 13, OBC 45; Nursing Officer (Male) UR 19, EWS 4, SC 6, ST 3, OBC 11. A further column lists 7 and 2 PwBD posts.

Is BHU part of NORCET?

No. NORCET covers AIIMS, JIPMER, ESIC, the Central Institute of Psychiatry at Ranchi, the National Institute of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases and central government hospitals in Delhi.

Has the current Nursing Officer result come out?

Not as at 12 September 2026. Shortlists and the not-eligible list are out; the final select list isn't.