Despite Challenges: Nursing Student Persistence

BACKGROUND: Seeking to improve nursing student retention in their small university, faculty conducted a literature review on attrition in nursing education and discovered it to be a significant global problem with nearly one third of qualified students discontinuing. Improved nursing student persistence could stem the growing worldwide nursing shortage. The existing research on retention indicates multi-faceted challenges and impacts but offers scant solutions or insight into student perspectives. METHOD: The nursing faculty piloted a bridge course for the freshman cohort to develop intrinsic strengths for student persistence and begin soliciting student feedback using a mixed-methods phenomenological approach. RESULTS: Faculty describe the bridge course framework and activities and present initial student responses. CONCLUSION: The pilot bridge course serves as one step toward identifying challenges and interventions from students' perspectives to support persistence as a means of meeting nursing shortage demands. [J Nurs Educ. 2019;58(7):427-430.].