Success in a Nursing Course Among Repeating Students: A Pilot Study

Area of Science:

• Nursing Education
• Medical-Surgical Nursing

Background:

• Nursing programs experience significant attrition, with approximately 20% of students not completing on the first attempt.
• The academic outcomes for students who repeat nursing courses are not well-documented, leaving their success largely unknown.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the correlation between targeted remediation and exam performance in repeating students within an advanced medical-surgical nursing course.
• To investigate if individualized faculty support improves outcomes for students needing to retake a course.

Main Methods:

• A pilot study utilized a correlational design with archival data from five repeating students.
• Intervention involved individualized meetings with faculty focusing on test-taking strategies, content review, and adaptive quizzing.

Main Results:

• A positive correlation was observed between the frequency and number of faculty meetings and student exam score increases.
• The remediation strategies appeared to enhance performance for students repeating the advanced medical-surgical course.

Conclusions:

• Targeted remediation, encompassing test-taking skills and content mastery, is a viable strategy to support repeating nursing students.
• Further research with larger sample sizes is recommended to validate these preliminary findings and generalize the results.