Accelerated and traditional baccalaureate nursing programs: A comparison of student academic outcomes

A critical nursing shortage exists today. AACN (2005) predicts that by the year 2012 more than a million new and replacement nurses will be needed. This shortage challenges colleges of nursing to develop programs to attract and educate qualified health professionals. Nursing schools have developed accelerated nursing programs to address the nursing shortage (AACN, 2005; 00H, 2006). However, limited research has been conducted on the effectiveness of accelerated programs as compared to established standards of traditional nursing programs. This study provides this comparison and was conducted at a university offering both an accelerated nursing program and a traditional nursing program. The academic outcomes of each student group were compared for significant differences in prerequisite course GPA, nursing course GPA, and first-time NCLEX-RN pass rates.;The data were collected using Colleague, a student information systems software product from Datatel, Inc. This method was chosen because of available historical data Student data on prerequisite course grades and nursing course grades were collected and analyzed to obtain prerequisite course GPA and nursing course GPA. NCLEX-RN test results were obtained from reports sent to the College of Nursing from the State Board of Nursing office. These results were presented as pass/fail on the first-time reports.;There was no significant difference in prerequisite course GPA among the accelerated and traditional nursing students over a four-year period of the programs. Nursing course GPA was significantly higher for the accelerated nursing students than for the traditional nursing students. Finally, no significant difference was found among the accelerated and traditional students for fast-time NCLEX-RN pass rates.;The conclusion from this study indicates that the accelerated nursing program is meeting the established standards of the traditional nursing program, the accelerated nursing students are performing better in their nursing courses than the traditional students, and the accelerated students are performing as well as the traditional students in their prerequisite courses and their first-time pass rates on the NCLEX-RN. This study extended the quantitative research available on accelerated nursing programs.