Bruin Brief 2021-08-20: Patterns of MSN APRN Certification Rates of Program Graduates

Graduates of the SON master’s program come in two varieties:

• MECN: New nurses who enter the profession through the master’s entry to clinical nursing (MECN).

• MSN:  Nurses who earn a master’s degree in nursing and achieving advanced practice credentials as a nurse practitioner or clinical nurse specialist.  For the purposes of this brief, we can consider the options for MSN preparation to include family nurse practitioner (FNP) with or without an additional focus in occupational and environmental health; adult/gerontology nurse practitioner-acute care (AGNP-AC); adult/gerontology nurse practitioner-primary care (AGNP-PC) with or without an additional focus in occupational and environmental health; adult/gerontology clinical nurse specialist-acute care (AGCN-AC) or dual clinical nurse specialist and nurse practitioner (AGCN+NP-AC), pediatric nurse practitioner primary care (PNP-PC), pediatric nurse practitioner, acute care (PNP-AC), pediatric nurse practitioner dual primary care/acute care (PNP-PC+AC), pediatric nurse practitioner/clinical nurse specialist dual acute care (PNP-CNS-AC) and pediatric clinical nurse specialist (P-CNS).

The BRN requires us to report on graduate outcomes in each of these practice specialties within the MSN program.

What is the BRN looking for?

Pass rates. They want to see evidence of quality educational outcomes in the form of graduates’ pass rates on the specialty certifying examination.

Who offers the certification examination?

Certification examination is offered by the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners (AANP), the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), and the Pediatric Nursing Certification Board.

How good is good enough on a certification exam?

For an individual student, ‘good enough’ means passing the exam.  For the school as a whole, our master evaluation plan sets ‘good enough’ at >80% pass rate for first-time test takers.

How are we doing as a school?

There are two ways of answering that. First, let’s look at student performance in 2019 on certifying exams in relation to the SON standard of 80%. You can see that student pass rates meet or exceed the standard we set for ourselves.

Figure 1. UCLA SON MSN graduates’ Certification Pass Rates in 2019

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Another way of looking at how we’re doing as a school is pass rate trends-over-time by MSN program specialty area. Let’s look at data tables and graphic displays of pass rates from 2016-2020.

Table 1. UCLA SON MSN Graduates’ APRN Certification Rates 2016-2020 

Figure 2. UCLA SON MSN Graduates’ APRN Certification Rates 2016-2020 

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Trend data show strengths in graduates’ pass rates on certification exams. We are meeting and exceeding the SON master evaluation plan benchmarks.

What’s the take-away?
Program outcome data will spark an important conversation for our school. As we achieve our Strategic Goal of transitioning the MSN program to a DNP program this year, how do we want to use data about program outcomes to inform the next iteration of our graduate preparation of  advanced practice nurses?