ST. LOUIS (MBU) – Missouri Baptist University’s (MBU) School of Nursing led all nursing programs in the St. Louis region with a 95% pass rate for the 2022 National Council Licensure Examination for Registered Nurses (NCLEX-RN). The NCLEX is the exam all nursing students must pass to be licensed as a registered nurse in the United States and Canada.
“I am incredibly proud of our 2022 graduates and the 95% NCLEX-RN pass rate,” said Dr. Amber Pyatt, dean of the School of Nursing and associate professor of nursing. “The students’ hard work coupled with our nursing faculty and staff’s passionate commitment to excellence continue to result in bright futures and successful employment for our graduates,” said Pyatt.
The 95% pass rate by MBU School of Nursing graduates in 2022 is higher than all St. Louis-area nursing schools for BSN and ADN programs and ranks seventh in the state of Missouri. The NCLEX national pass rate for 2021 was 82.48%. The national pass rate for 2022 has not yet been released.
Dr. Pyatt spoke about key factors that have led to consecutive years of high NCLEX-RN pass rates. “What distinguishes MBU’s School of Nursing from some other programs is not so much about what we teach but how we teach,” she said. Pyatt continued, “We have expert faculty, proven teaching strategies and resources that make us stand out. We prepare our students for the exam by introducing them to NCLEX-style questions at the very beginning of the program. For students who may struggle at some point along the way we provide peer tutoring, one-on-one faculty sessions, as well as test preparation products and strategies from Assessment Technology Institute (ATI) to help them succeed.”
The NCLEX-RN is administered by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), an independent, not-for-profit organization that develops the nursing license exams for registered nurses and practical nurses. All 59 national regulatory bodies responsible for the regulation of nursing practice in the United States are members of NCSBN.
“Students who graduate from the MBU School of Nursing continue to set themselves apart from other nursing graduates in large part because they have learned to be a nurse through a more holistic approach than is offered in some other programs. We teach through a Christian worldview and train our students to care for patients with a highly compassionate, person-centered approach. I think our test scores and high pass rate reflect the value of that approach,” Pyatt said.
The MBU School of Nursing launched the year-long Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing program (ABSN) in 2022 in an effort to meet the growing local and national demand for nurses. Among the quickest and most affordable programs in the bi-state area, the ABSN courses are taught in MBU’s state-of-the-art School of Nursing located in the Walker Medical Building that neighbors MBU’s main campus in West St. Louis County.