By Amy Curtis | July 2026

In this issue:  Celebrating Kansas NCLEX Pass Rates, Solving Preceptor Skills Gaps, and Webinar Recording Available.

This newsletter is 1,331 words long, about a 5-minute read.

Kansas Nursing Grads Continue to Beat National Averages on NCLEX Exams

Recently Becker’s Hospital Review ranked each state according to first-time U.S. Educated pass rates on the National Council Licensure Exam for Registered Nurses and Practical Nurses. In both charts, Kansas ranked at the top and above the national average. According to the article, in 2025:

This data aligns with the licensure information reported in the State of Nursing Education report published by the Kansas Nursing Workforce Center which includes the first-time pass rates broken out by PN, ADN, and BSN level.

In the report, licensure pass rates were identified as a bright spot along the nursing education pipeline. Kansas nursing schools prepare students well to pass their licensing exam, the last stop in the pipeline before employment as a nurse. Well done!

Sustaining Solution: Preceptors Key to Solving Arizona’s New Nurse Skills Gap

Nursing workforce issues are persistent across every state. It can be helpful to look to other states for possible solutions that can be deployed in Kansas. The Nurses for a Healthy Arizona initiative caught our attention.

In 2022, the Arizona state legislature allocated $25 million annually over three years to strengthen and expand nurse preceptor training programs.

The goals: increase the placements of student nurses/new graduate nurses and nursing assistants in clinical rotations; increase and enhance preceptor training; increase the number and retention of nurses and nursing assistants in the state of Arizona.

They chose to take a flexible approach using policy standards that would work for both critical access hospitals as well as large academic medical centers.

If an organization already had transition-to-practice infrastructure in place, they could keep what they had and simply layer the standardized principles on top of it. The principles were organized around six domains of preceptor practice:

“For more than 20 years, Kansas-based preceptor training initiatives have helped strengthen the health care workforce by preparing experienced clinicians to serve as effective mentors and educators,” said Terry Siek, MSN, RN, NEA-BC, Director of Clinical Services, Kansas Hospital Association. “Clinical staff are frequently expected to precept students, new graduates, and newly hired employees despite having little or no formal preparation for the role.”

Siek continued: “Through structured, evidence-based education, health care professionals develop skills in communication, coaching, feedback delivery, conflict resolution, and adult learning principles. These skills enable preceptors to better support learners and new employees during their transition into practice, fostering a welcoming culture that improves onboarding, engagement, and retention.”

The Arizona initiative found that the most successful organizations had these two factors baked into their program:

In Arizona, early results showed improved nurse retention for those who participated in the program as compared with organization-wide retention rates.

“Similar to the Arizona initiative, expanded funding and targeted outreach in Kansas have also increased access to preceptor education for rural and underserved health care organizations that have historically had limited opportunities for this type of professional development,” Siek noted.

The Kansas Hospital Association found that by offering dedicated preceptor training, participants consistently demonstrated high levels of satisfaction and meaningful improvements in confidence and preparedness for the preceptor role. Participants also:

Collectively, preceptor training efforts have strengthened workforce development pipeline programs, improved mentorship capacity, supported recruitment and retention goals, and established a sustainable foundation for developing future health care preceptors.

Webinar Recording Available: The State of Nursing in Kansas Report, Vol. 2—Leveraging the Data to Maximize Strategic Decisions to Support the Nursing Workforce

If you missed the webinar, State of Nursing in Kansas Report, Vol. 2: Leveraging the Data to Maximize Strategic Decisions to Support the Nursing Workforce, the recording is now available.

The webinar features a panel of healthcare and education leaders, including:

Learn how these leaders use the nursing workforce report in their work.

Watch it here.

Research Committee Meetings

The Research Committee did not meet in July. The Committee will resume on August 27, 2026.

Allyn Miller, Ph.D., RN, CRNA, will present her dissertation project, "Enhancing Usability of State-Level Nursing Workforce Dashboards: A Multi-Perspective Study.”

Led by Shin Hye Park, PhD, RN, the Research Committee facilitates and promotes collaborative nurse research activities across the state. The committee's goal is to leverage research talent to better serve the healthcare community of Kansas, advance the field of nursing and healthcare, and strengthen the nursing workforce in Kansas.

Sign up here to receive the Research Committee meeting link. Please send this link to colleagues who may also wish to attend.

Connecting with Nurse Educators

Hello colleagues and friends,

This summer has flown by and somehow, we’re at the end of July, almost ready to start another academic year.

This month I was able to spend time at the Kansas Nurse Educator’s conference and present the progress in the Pathway to Nursing project. The first State of Nursing Education in Kansas report and the KansasNursingSchools.com web tool were both recently released and activated. Please take the opportunity to access them. We were able to identify challenges potential students face in the processes when deciding and applying to our pre-licensure programs. The search for effective solutions continues. We also identified a vital key finding: the strong education outcomes the nurse educators across Kansas produce. These skilled faculty members regularly prepare students to pass the NCLEX at rates higher than the national average. Well done!

The meaningful connections with you, the contributors and readers of our Newsletter, the members of our Research Committee and Advisory Board, and those of you who share questions, great ideas, and data are the foundation of the contributions we are striving to make to nursing in Kansas. Thank you for the invitations to interact and present to your organizations, staff, and community members. While I always love the opportunity to present the work of the Center, the meaningful connections are the best.  

Let’s keep working together to develop solutions to the nursing education gaps and other challenges we will identify, measure and report.

With appreciation,

—Barbara MacArthur, MN, RN, FAAN 

Director, Kansas Nursing Workforce Center

What We’re Reading

In Case You Missed It!

KansasNursingSchools.com helps potential students explore nursing education options at all schools with nursing programs in Kansas.

Download the State of Nursing in Kansas, volume 2. This edition tracks trending data from 2015 to 2025.

Download the State of Nursing Education in Kansas report.

Have Kansas Nursing Workforce news, solutions, or kudos you’d like us to share?
Email nursingwill@kumc.edu

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