Northwestern College nursing graduates record 100 percent board exam pass rate

Northwestern College’s 2024 nursing graduates have recorded a 100% pass rate on the NCLEX-RN board exam for the fifth consecutive year. This high level of graduate achievement demonstrates the quality of Northwestern’s nursing program, ranked #3 in Iowa by RNCareers.org. 

“The continued success rate demonstrates the effectiveness of the curriculum, strength of our clinical and preceptor partnerships, as well as quality and character of the nursing students,” says Dr. Karie Stamer, associate professor of nursing, nursing department chair and director of the online RN-BSN program at Northwestern.  

According to Stamer, the program’s strength is achieved through a combination of teaching strategies and practical real-world nursing experiences. “Active learning strategies help students apply knowledge and gain confidence in their skills. We partner with area rural and urban health care centers, as well as public health departments, to provide students with a vast array of real-world nursing experiences beginning in their first semester. Prior to graduation, each student completes a 120-hour preceptorship, working one-on-one with a practicing nurse to make the transition from school to career successful.” 

Distinctively, Northwestern’s program also teaches students to achieve personal health, wholeness and peace, equipping them to help others work toward those things in the healing process. “Our students learn to value all parts of what makes us human-mind, body and spirit-and all the uniqueness those things bring,” says Stamer.  

Northwestern’s 2024 nursing graduates have been hired by Blank Children’s Hospital in Des Moines, Iowa; Bozeman Deaconess Hospital in Bozeman, Montana; Mary Lanning Healthcare in Hastings, Nebraska; Pella Regional Hospital in Pella, Iowa; Sanford Hospital and Sanford Children’s Hospital in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and Sioux Center Health in Sioux Center, Iowa, among others. The alumni are working in pediatric, oncology, emergency care, neonatal ICU, medical-surgical, and labor and delivery units. 

Northwestern offers a traditional undergraduate BSN degree in addition to an RN-to-BSN online option, both of which are accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education and approved by the Iowa Board of Nursing. The college’s nursing arts laboratory, located in the state-of-the-art DeWitt Family Science Center, includes high-fidelity simulators and patient rooms, a flexible learning space with eight bays, IV training arms and other equipment, a hospital-based computerized medication system, and an electronic health record simulation program.  

Northwestern’s BSN program will prepare you to be a healer in a hurting world. With more than 700 hours of clinical experience in both rural and urban healthcare settings, multiple opportunities to learn by serving through healthcare-related mission trips, and a state-of-the-art nursing laboratory in the DeWitt Family Science Center, Northwestern’s program is accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education and approved by the Iowa Board of Nursing.