Predictors of Success in Baccalaureate Nursing Curriculum

This presentation is the reflection of an ongoing research effort to determine the best predictors for student success in a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) programs and potential for successful completion of the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN). Healthcare arena is becoming more complex and it may be a challenging environment for a novice nurse. Students who were successful in their studies will be more apt to perform in the continuously evolving healthcare field. Therefore, it is important to determine student selection criteria that may affect future performance in a nursing program as well as future professional practice.

Preliminary results are suggestive that pre-nursing science GPA and performance on certain science nursing courses may be strong predictors of success in the undergraduate nursing curriculum and may correlate with high passing rates on licensure examination.  In spite of the fact that some generalizations can be made about the predictors of success in nursing curriculum and on NCLEX-RN, each nursing program may consider working on refining its own admission criteria because of the possibility of significant variations among students in each program.