PREDICTING BACCALAUREATE NURSING STUDENTS' FIRST-SEMESTER OUTCOMES: HESI ADMISSION ASSESSMENT

As a means of promoting evidence-based admission selection decisions in a baccalaureate school of nursing, the faculty at a college of nursing in the southeastern part of the United States investigated the value of including preadmission exam scores as one criterion in the admission protocol. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of Elsevier's HESI Admission Assessment (A(2)) exam as a predictor of student success. Four A(2) exams were administered to baccalaureate nursing students: reading comprehension, vocabulary & general knowledge, math, and anatomy & physiology. The mean of reading comprehension scores and vocabulary & general knowledge scores constituted the students' English scores, and the mean of all 4 exam scores constituted the students' A(2) composite scores. A(2) scores were correlated with final course grades in the 3 first-semester nursing courses (N = 184). There was a significantly positive (P <= .01) relationship between A(2) scores and final course grades for the 3 first-semester nursing courses-as A(2) scores increased, so did final course grades. Faculty concluded that A(2) scores provided a valuable measure of students' ability to succeed within the nursing program and, as such, they enabled faculty to make evidence-based decisions regarding applicant selection. (Index words: HESI Admission Assessment (A(2)); Standardized tests; Specialty exams; Benchmarks; Predictive validity; Baccalaureate program) J Prof Nurs 29:S38-S42, 2013. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc All rights reserved.