Date of Award

2024

Document Type

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Degree Name

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Department

Nursing

Committee Chair

Darlene Showalter

Committee Member

Misty Smith

Committee Member

Shikha Modi

Subject(s)

Nursing schools--Faculty, Nursing--Examinations--Study and teaching, National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses, Nursing school dropouts--Prevention

Abstract

In a prelicensure baccalaureate program at a public state university, a faculty-coach teaching model was implemented for the final semester; however, a formal evaluation of its effectiveness was not conducted. With a focus on accountability and class structure, this model was implemented to decrease final semester attrition and increase the National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN) pass rate. Attrition poses a significant challenge for nursing schools and educational institutions, impacting program success benchmarks and the quality of the nursing workforce. The first-time pass rate on the NCLEX-RN at the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH) College of Nursing has been inconsistent for over a decade, with percentages as low as 79%. The National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) reported an all-time low percentage in 2022 of success for first-time test takers for the previous 10 years (NCSBN, 2022). This low pass rate not only affects students, but directly affects the profession of Nursing as a shortage of nurses still plagues our society. A multi-tiered intervention was implemented in 2020 at UAH focused on faculty coaching and customized remediation. Though regular evaluations of a nursing program—including its curriculum, teaching methods, and assessment strategies—facilitate data-driven decisions for continuous quality improvement, this last-semester program was never formally evaluated for efficacy. A program evaluation based on Daniel Stufflebeam’s context, input, process, and product (CIPP) evaluation model was implemented to assess the impact of a faculty coach model on final semester attrition and NCLEX-RN pass rate. Though previous programmatic and curricular efforts must be acknowledged, after the implementation of the faculty coach model, final semester attrition dropped significantly, reaching zero by 2023. The NCLEX-RN first-time pass rates also improved, consistently surpassing 95% and nearing 100% in recent years, highlighting the model's role in enhancing student outcomes.

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