Need for nurses continues in Mississippi

• Enrollment in undergraduate programs sees a slight decline while the turnover rate reaches 21%.

Enrollment in Mississippi undergraduate nursing programs showed a slight decline year over year but graduate programs saw an increase, Dr. Melissa Temple, Director of Nursing Education for the State Institutions of Higher Learning told the IHL Board last week.

Mississippi currently has 41 total degree programs offered through 25 schools of nursing. Total enrollment saw a slight drop from the 2022-2023 year, from 3,865 to 3,847 for the 2023-2024 school year.

However, Temple noted that enrollment in graduate programs increased while associate and baccalaureate program enrollment declined. 

She also told the IHL Board a need for registered nurses in the state continues, with vacancies occurring statewide and the turnover rate reaching 21.2 percent in 2023.

“We are still facing a shortage,” Temple explained. “There were 1,500 vacancies reported in 2023, with a report of 406 needed over the next two years.”

Temple shared that licensure pass rates for first-time exam takers is on the rise in Mississippi, with the state average continuing to outpace the national average for the past several years. 

In 2021, there were 1,890 students who passed their licensure exams the first time. That number increased to 2,118 in 2024. Temple said the state’s first-time pass rate in 2024 was 93 percent, higher than the national average of 91 percent.

“You can see that our Mississippi test takers continue to perform better with a higher pass rate on the licensure exam than that of the national average,” Temple said.

Temple said the total number of nursing licenses in the state declined by about 840 active nurses from the prior year after the renewal deadline passed.

“So, what we see may be the number of nurses who may have left the state, retired, and or opted to not renew because they left the workforce,” Temple described.

Even though there was a decline in total active licenses year over year, increases in the state’s nursing workforce have been seen since the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighted by the number of nurse practitioners increasing by more than 1,800 since 2021.

Temple went on to ask the IHL Board to approve the initial, full and continuing accreditation for all nursing degree programs in the state, except those at four institutions. The four programs in question are the BSN and MSN programs at Alcorn State University, the ADN program at Copiah-Lincoln Community College, the ADN program at Jones County Junior College, and the DNP program at the University of Southern Mississippi.

For those programs, Temple asked the IHL Board to grant them continuing accreditation with conditions, which will require those programs to develop a plan for improvement on noted deficiencies by June 30 and/or issue a follow-up report.

Deficiencies noted at those nursing programs range from exam pass rates not meeting IHL policy required minimums (ASU and USM), student to faculty ratios being non-compliant (Co-Lin), faculty not meeting minimum graduate degree requirements (Co-Lin), a lack of evidence that faculty are reviewing assessment data that can help ensure student achievement (ASU), and completion rates not meeting IHL requirements (JCJC).