The Associate Degree Nursing (ADN) Program at Amarillo College clearly is excelling in its mission to educate successful graduates to meet the community’s need for registered nurses, but nursing education administrators and faculty at the College are not resting on their laurels.

Four ambitious initiatives are presently either being implemented or drawn up to ensure even greater success moving forward.

AC believes the time is right to be proactive because its ADN Program is on such solid footing. It was, after all, among the top performers among Texas nursing programs on the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) for registered nurses in 2015, and again is predicted to be among statewide leaders in 2016.

This is evidenced by the fact that nursing education programs in Texas are subject to scrutiny from the Texas Board of Nursing (TBON), especially when it comes to the first-time pass rates among graduates who take the NCLEX. And while the average of first-time pass rates in 2015 among schools of nursing in Texas was 85.22 percent and the national average was 84.18 percent, a whopping 94.8 percent of AC graduates passed the exam that year on their first attempt.

The Program is continuing its trend of success in 2016, too, as 95.5 percent of AC’s May 2016 graduates and 94.3 percent of December 2015 graduates passed the test on the first attempt. The annual first-time pass rate for 2016 will be determined by the percentage of graduates who passed the exam on the first attempt between Oct. 1, 2015 and Sept. 30, 2016.

And because the TBON extends special recognition in the form of a “commendation” to programs that exceed a 90-percent first-time pass rate, AC is in line, come January, to receive its second such accolade in the past two years.

“We are honored to educate our nursing students who will then provide care to our community,” said Dr. Richard Pullen, dean of nursing and ADN Program director. “And we are proud that the NCLEX pass rate among our graduates has exceeded 90 percent in the past two years.

“But we can see opportunities for improvements that will enable us to increase the pool of qualified applicants for admission and enhance student performance in the classroom,” Pullen said. “Chief among our goals is to incrementally increase the number of Program graduates and meet the labor-market demand for RNs.”

These, then, are initiatives AC has in its ADN pipeline:

Initiative #1. The ADN Program will begin teaching a section of first-semester nursing courses at the Moore County Campus (MCC) in Dumas beginning this fall semester (2016). Having first-semester courses at MCC will allow students who live in the northern Texas Panhandle to attend classes without having to commute all the way to Amarillo. Having the first-semester courses at MCC is an initial step in offering more of the nursing curriculum at this location. 

Initiative #2. In spring 2016, the ADN Program began admitting Transition students to the program each semester rather than at only one time each year. Transition students are licensed vocational nurses (LVNs) who are seeking to become RNs. Admitting them twice each year ultimately will help increase the number of RN graduates in the Texas Panhandle.

Initiative #3. The West Campus Tutoring Outreach Center opened in fall 2015. Tutoring is a proven strategy that promotes and has improved student success in many nursing courses. Nursing students who do not pass an exam receive a “Tutoring Prescription” that must be completed before their next exam. However, all students are encouraged to seek tutoring at the Center regardless of how they are performing in class.

Initiative #4. The ADN Program is in the initial phases of creating an accelerated second-degree ADN Program Option. This option would allow students who already have earned an associate degree or higher to complete the nursing courses in 12 months, if they meet admission criteria. Once the program is developed, it will then need approval by the College Curriculum Committee, TBON and the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing (ACEN), which is the ADN Program’s accrediting body, before implementation.

Said Pullen: “We believe that a rigorous curriculum, innovative high-impact teaching strategies from a dedicated faculty, excellent clinical facilities, and partnerships and comprehensive student resources at the college, are the right combination to bring our students’ dreams of becoming a nurse to fruition.”

August 15, 2016