Variables Predicting Success in an Advanced Medical-Surgical Nursing Course and the NCLEX-RN for Pre-Licensure Baccalaureate Nursing Students

Abstract

The purpose of this descriptive, ex post facto study was to examine possible relationships between demographic, pre-programmatic, and programmatic factors with success in a final Advanced Medical-Surgical nursing course and the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses, as well as their predictive abilities. Data were obtained from the academic records of 209 full-time and part-time nursing program graduates who completed an upper-division baccalaureate nursing degree at a mid-Atlantic private urban university. Descriptive and inferential analyses were utilized to discover possible relationships between the two dependent variables and the various independent variables in groupings suggested by Carroll's (1963) model of School Learning. Two models were derived to predict success in the nursing program as evidenced by successful completion of the final Advanced Medical-Surgical nursing course and passing the NCLEX-RN on the first attempt. The first model identified age at entrance to the nursing program and repeating a science course as the two factors that explained approximately 49% of the variance in the Advanced Medical-Surgical course performance. The second model was able to predict 97.2% correctly those graduates who would be successful on the NCLEX-RN, and only identify 43.8% of those candidates likely to fail. The overall classification ability by the model was 89%. Implications for nursing educators are that more attention needs to be given to admission policies/procedures, and that students entering nursing programs require routine standardized evaluation, identification and remediation of nursing content gaps in order to be successful throughout their nursing studies and ultimately on the NCLEX-RN.