State board cites nursing program
ATC's Waynesboro campus has one year to improve exam scores
By Anne Marie Kyzer annemariek@thetruecitizen.com

The practical nursing program at Augusta Technical College's Waynesboro campus has been cited for having too few graduates pass a national exam.

The Georgia Board of Examiners of Licensed Practical Nurses placed the school's program on "conditional approval" status for 2008, because less than 80 percent of its students were able to pass the NCLEX-PN, the profession's national licensure exam.

According to ATC president Terry Elam, around 62 percent of the program's graduates taking the licensure exam for the first time passed last year. That number does not include those who passed it on later attempts.

The school has one year to bring the average up to the required 80 percent or the board could withdraw its approval of the school's program.

Elam explained that the graduating class with the lower pass rate was particularly small, so the number of students who did not pass the exam affected the rate significantly.

He added that the school has initiated a corrective plan that includes monitoring students in the program who are forced to retake courses and examining those students' transcripts to see where they may have had trouble. School officials are also looking at each course in the program to identify areas where students seemed to have the most problems on the exam.

"I'm positive we will do everything we can to pull the rate up," Elam said.

He also noted that if the program were to lose its approval, students and instructors at the Waynesboro campus would have slots reserved in the practical nursing programs offered at ATC's Thomson and Augusta campuses. Therefore, students could still earn their diplomas, and instructors would not lose their jobs.