Pre-registration diploma students: a quantitative study of entry characteristics and course outcomes

Nurse education has been transformed over the last decade and continuing ch ange is likely. Nurse educators are responsible for meeting the quality ass urance standards of local stakeholders and student retention and progress a re important aspects of this process. As part of a monitoring exercise, an enquiry was set up to review pre-registration selection and recruitment str ategies and to establish if there were any significant relationships betwee n the characteristics of pre-registration diploma entrants and their academ ic achievement or completion rates. A multi-factorial tree-based technique was used for this purpose. This is one of the first British studies to cons ider both academic performance and completion rates for pre-registration di ploma students. Four cohorts (N = 355) were studied. There was marked heter ogeneity in student characteristics with a wide age distribution, a signifi cant proportion of mature entrants with previous care experience, and consi derable diversity in terms of education. Education and age were significant predictors of academic achievement: entrants with a minimum of two A level s and mature women with recent study experience did particularly well. Youn ger recruits with modest educational qualifications on entry performed less well in their assessments of theoretical knowledge. Younger students tende d to leave more regularly, and well-qualified entrants showed a greater ten dency to complete, although these relationships were not statistically sign ificant. Multi-factorial analysis demonstrated that organisational and cour se characteristics have a conjoint influence on course outcomes. Although t he study is concerned with Project 2000 in the United Kingdom, there are le ssons to be drawn concerning the selection and support of non-traditional r ecruits into nursing.