ATLANTA – Leaders in the field of nursing education called for colleges to improve nursing school graduation rates substantially at this week’s annual meeting of the Southern Regional Education Board’s Council on Collegiate Education for Nursing.
Patricia L. Starck, the dean of the nursing school at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, told a conference of nursing college deans and faculty members here Monday that a study of nursing school graduation rates in the Houston-Galveston region of Texas showed a 67 percent graduation rate for students who began their studies in 2001.
While the 67 percent rate for that area is higher than overall graduation rates for public four-year and two-year colleges in the United States and most SREB states, rates for nursing schools need to rise in all states to help alleviate the nation’s major shortage of registered nurses.
"We absolutely must improve these graduation rates … if we are ever going to solve this nursing shortage problem," said Starck, who completed her term as the president of the SREB nursing education council. Sara Barger, dean and professor at the Capstone College of Nursing at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, was elected the council’s new president during the conference.
Starck led an effort sponsored by the Greater Houston Partnership, a regional business and commerce group in the Houston-Galveston area, to calculate regional graduation rates for about 20 two- and four-year nursing schools in that area. The business group identified the nursing shortage is the top local issue in health care, Starck said.
Strategies to improve nursing graduation rates include work-study programs that help students gain clinical experience and possible job placements, Starck said. Some of the factors contributing to the graduation rates include the faculty culture, the rise in nursing students learning to speak English, and students’ increasing work and family obligations, she added.
For more than 50 years, the SREB Council on Collegiate Education for Nursing has brought together leaders in the nursing field to improve the quality of nursing education and in recent years has focused on curbing the shortage of nurses and nurse educators in the 16 SREB member states and across the nation.
Other speakers and topics during the October 5-7 conference included:
Gwen Sherwood and Beverly Foster of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on graduating more students from nursing school and their school’s comprehensive approach to teaching and learning.
Anne Belcher and Linda E. Rose of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore on the same topic.
Mary Ann Camann of Kennesaw State University in Georgia on developing a comprehensive admission process.
Tammie Mann McCoy of the Mississippi University for Women in Columbus on a plan for success in selection, retention and graduation of students.
Elizabeth Shelton of West Virginia University on interviewing undergraduate students in the admissions process.
Helen Taggart of Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, Georgia, on increasing diversity in the nursing workforce.
Margaret Kroposki of Greenville Technical College in South Carolina on improving students’ chances for graduation in an associate’s degree program.
Jean Bartels, a member of the University System of Georgia Task Force on Nursing Education and dean and professor of nursing at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, on the state’s systemwide plan for nursing education.
Mary Jane Ashe of the University of Texas at Arlington on improving recruitment, retention and completion among students.
This year’s conference was dedicated to the late M. Elizabeth Carnegie for her pioneering work in nursing education. Carnegie was a longtime nursing journal editor and the author of many books and articles on nursing. She was featured in the recent book The Soul of Leadership. As the dean of nursing at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, she represented nursing on a 1948 SREB committee on medical training.
For more information about nursing and nursing education in your state, or to connect with sources of information in your state, contact SREB Communications.
SREB, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization based in Atlanta, Georgia, advises state education leaders on ways to improve education. SREB was created in 1948 by Southern governors and legislatures to help leaders in education and government work cooperatively to advance education and improve the social and economic life of the region. SREB has 16 member states: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. Each is represented by its governor and four gubernatorial appointees. For more information, go to www.sreb.org.
