Nursing graduates record 100 percent board exam pass rate

Northwestern College’s 2020 nursing graduates recorded a 100% first-time pass rate on the NCLEX-RN exam. All 12 of the nursing alumni who recently took the exam passed it on their first attempt.

“The pass rate is the benchmark for analyzing a nursing program’s quality,” says Dr. Julie Dragstra, assistant professor and nursing department chair at Northwestern. “For this class of students to record a 100% first-time pass rate speaks to the high quality of Northwestern’s BSN program. It shows that we prepare them well for practice, and it also demonstrates the commitment of students and faculty to achieve at this high level. I’m especially impressed with this accomplishment in light of the transition to online studies we had to make this spring due to COVID-19.”

Northwestern’s 2020 nursing graduates have been hired by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota; Sanford USD Medical Center and Avera McKennan Hospital in Sioux Falls; Unity Point Health-St. Luke’s in Sioux City; UNC REX Healthcare in Raleigh, North Carolina; and CHI Health St. Elizabeth in Lincoln, Nebraska, among others. The alumni are working in medical, ER, cardiology, oncology, neurology, and burn and wound units.

Northwestern’s nursing program has been ranked among the nation’s top 15 percent by NursingSchoolsAlmanac.com. 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 trainers, 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.