west virginia board of examiners for registered professional nurses

GRADUATES OF SCHOOLS OF NURSINGPREPARING INDIV~DUALS FOR INITIAL LiCENSUREAS A REG~STERED PROFESS~ONAl NURSEN001988 ~ 2008West Virginia has 19 schools of nursing which offer a total of 20 nursing programs preparing individuals for initiallicensure. There are other programs which offer additional degrees for those already licensed. This graph shows the numberofindividuals graduating from schools of nursing in West Virginia to prepare for ill1itiallicensure. More schools are graduatingnursing students at various times throughout the year in addition to the traditional spring graduation. Schools are nowreporting the number of graduates in a calendar year.During half of the time between 1988 and 2008, there were three basic degrees offered, bachelor degree, associatedegree and diploma graduating a total of 16,895 students. The last diploma program, St. Mary's Hospital, graduated its lastclass in 1996. At that time, St. Mary's joined with Marshall University to offer an Associate Degree in nursing.In 1984 there were 1,284 graduates. This was the highest number of graduates until 2007 when 1,162 candidatesgraduated from West Virginia nursing programs. The lowest number of graduates was in 2001 with 598 graduates. Shouldthe historical cycle of graduates repeat itself, there should be another increase in the number of graduates over the next fourto five years. However, the prediction is for a scarcity of registered professional nurses due to the aging workforce, retirementof nursing educators and a decrease in the number of persons interested in nursing as a career. Even though more malesare choosing nursing as a career, the profession remains predominantly female.YEARS 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997NUMBER OF 672 655 791 782 762 941 869 843 873 746GRADUATES1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008712 721 694 598 618 712 763 869 978 1,162 1,134