Establishing a method for tracking persistence rates of nursing students: one school's experience.
The national nursing shortage is challenging schools and policymakers to develop strategies to increase the number of registered nurses. A tracking system that reports retention rates can provide a critical measure of a school's effectiveness and can assist decision makers in prioritizing where it is best to spend private and public dollars. It can also support a school's efforts to engage in continuous quality-improvement activities. This article explains how one school of nursing developed a method to track its students, how it perfected the method, and how it now uses the findings as part of its ongoing program-improvement activities. The principle players in the creation of the tracking system are identified along with the steps that have been taken to accurately track students in different nursing-program options at the baccalaureate level as well as the masters program and doctoral program levels. Suggestions for sustaining the tracking system and the use of the data are given.
Administrative Affairs, Barry University School of Nursing, Miami Shores, FL 33161, USA. kpapes@mail.barry.edu
Kathleen
K
Papes
Regina
R
Lopez
D019985:Benchmarking / Q000458:organization & administration; D003625:Data Collection / Q000379:methods*; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004508:Education, Nursing, Baccalaureate / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004511:Education, Nursing, Graduate / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005431:Florida; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods; D020380:Needs Assessment / Q000458:organization & administration; D015402:Nursing Education Research; D015397:Program Evaluation; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013332:Student Dropouts / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D013338:Students, Nursing / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D013997:Time Factors; D017749:Total Quality Management / Q000458:organization & administration