NCSBN presents national nursing education dashboard to BRN committee; board encouraged to join data network

Nancy Spectre, director of nursing education policy at the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, presented the National Nursing Education Database (NNED) and its dashboards to the California Board of Registered Nursing’s Nurse Practice Committee.

Spectre said the NNED collects evidence‑based quality indicators from participating states and programs, and that the database now covers hundreds of programs and hundreds of thousands of students. “There is no data like that out there in nursing education,” Spectre told the committee while demonstrating aggregate dashboards that show ENCLEx pass rates, faculty composition, clinical‑hour distributions and student capacity funnels.

Spectre described both a public national dashboard and state‑level dashboards that will be available to boards for program‑level comparisons; she said participating boards can also export PDF reports. Committee Executive Officer Lori Melby noted the board recently voted to join the annual survey and said staff will work with NCSBN to integrate California’s program data into the dashboards.

Committee members asked why some states have not participated; Spectre said turnover at boards of nursing and limited familiarity with the tool are factors and encouraged outreach, including testimonials from states already using the system.

Spectre’s demonstration emphasized two takeaways: (1) program‑level dashboards can help regulators and legislators see where capacity, enrollment and faculty shortages constrain nurse production, and (2) the database’s verification routines aim to ensure data quality before publication.