Nicholls nursing scores top state, national averages

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Nursing students at Nicholls State University are passing the national nursing license exam at a higher rate than the national and state average for that exam.

Nearly 92 percent of the most recent graduating class of Nicholls nursing students passed the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses. The state average pass rate is nearly 86 percent and the national average is nearly 82 percent, according to a press release from Nicholls State University.

“The stellar outcome for the nursing program is a result of a committed faculty,” said Sue Westbrook, dean of the College of Nursing at Nicholls. “It’s also as a result of [having] excellent clinical affiliates…engaged students…and the support university administration.”


Westbrook said that most of the students in the program are first-generation college students.

One-hundred-and-three out of 112 students who took the exam passed the exam.

Nicholls University’s Department of Nursing receives between 150 and 160 applicants every semester but only admits about 60 students into the program, said Rebecca Lyons, department head at Nicholls College of Nursing.


The pass rate must be looked at in conjunction with the total number of graduates to be fully appreciated, Lyons said. A school with only 25 students in its graduating class and a 100 percent pass rate is different from a school with a lower pass rate and higher numbers of students.

For example, the Louisiana State Board of Nursing requires a strict ratio of one faculty member to 10 students be adhered to while performing clinicals in a hospital setting. A larger school would have to maintain higher faculty rosters in order to comply with that requirement.

“There is such a shortage of prepared nursing faculty nationally,” Westbrook said. “It makes it a difficult thing to make it all come to fruition.”


As mid-year budget cuts loom over Nicholls, funding to finance departments in the university is in a perilous state.

“That’s going to be university administration’s call to look at what programs at Nicholls meet workforce needs,” Westbrook said. “What is the demand for those programs in terms of student interest.”

The nursing dean acknowledges that “something has got to give” and does not delude herself into believing budget cuts to the nursing department won’t happen, but said she is currently operating under the assumption that it will not happen until told otherwise by university administrators.


A Nicholls State nursing student practices administering an IV in class. NSU students are passing the national nursing license exam at higher rates.

 

JEAN-PAUL ARGUELLO | THE TIMES