This past July, Pfeiffer University announced that 100 percent of its Class of 2026 Nursing graduates had passed the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) on their first attempt. The NCLEX is the national licensing exam required to become a registered nurse.

This perfect first-time pass rate, coupled with the fact that all members of the graduating class are working at hospitals and healthcare facilities across North Carolina, are quality indicators that Pfeiffer regularly promotes.

Still, Dr. David Hudson DNP MSN RN, the new Director and Chair of the Department of Nursing at Pfeiffer, is focused on new ways of strengthening the program and improving student success. He has already taken several steps to make quality control a top priority.

“We are constantly looking at the student data, their performance, and where we need to improve,” he said, referring to the most recent graduates. “We’ll uncover where the students’ weaknesses were and hopefully identify corresponding weaknesses in the curriculum. The goal is to help fill that gap so that the classes and cohorts to follow continue to have success.”

Hudson said that working at Pfeiffer appealed to him because of the University’s small, service-oriented, liberal arts environment. He brings long and varied experience to the directorship: He practiced nursing for 15 years in the Charlotte, N.C. area until 2010, when he transitioned to teaching for and/or directing university nursing programs.

He’s bullish on faculty development, stressing that each of Pfeiffer’s five faculty members are encouraged to attend faculty development conferences, workshops, and webinars. Hudson notes that these continuing education opportunities ensure that Pfeiffer’s faculty are not only outstanding nurses, but that they are also well-trained and outstanding nursing instructors. 

Additionally, Hudson plans to fully implement an NCLEX prep product provided through Assessment Technologies Institute (ATI) so that it benefits faculty as well as students.

“They have a dedicated nurse educator for us who can come in and work with us to not only implement their product, but also to work on test question writing or creating case studies or basically anything that we need,” Hudson said.

Hudson has come to recognize that because AI is not going anywhere, “we need to teach our future nurses how to use it appropriately and professionally.”

For example, a patient presents with a heart condition, and a nurse asks an AI program to develop a nursing-care plan in response.

“The important thing is to critique that plan using your textbook and your resources that we’ve given you,” Hudson said. “Are the references that the AI system used to create that document credible? It’s all about confirming that the AI data is correct so that the plan we’re proposing is not going to cause harm to our patients.”

As Hudson contemplates longer-term goals of Pfeiffer’s nursing program, he notes that re-accreditation by the Commission of Collegiate Nursing Education, which was created by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, is scheduled for the spring of 2028. After the program is reaccredited, he may begin the process of adding online master’s-level programs, having begun researching the need for them over the next 18 months or so.

In the shorter term, Hudson will seek to increase the numbers of B.S. degree-seeking students in Pfeiffer’s nursing program. There are currently 30 but the terms of the current accreditation allow for 10 more, which is also what Hudson believes current program faculty can teach.

“We believe that we can grow,” he said. “What’s the barrier that is keeping us from being at 40? What do we need to do to be more accessible to the student and applicant?”

Pfeiffer is committed to addressing what Hudson described as a widely reported “shortage of healthcare workers, particularly nurses at the bedside.”

“The whole point of Pfeiffer’s nursing program is to help produce a safe, effective, entry-level bedside nurse,” he said.

The way such nurses are produced at Pfeiffer makes it special, and Hudson wants to preserve that. “We are very student-centric,” he said. “Our faculty here know our students. They develop a rapport with them that goes much deeper than just advising or teaching them; they mentor them and they serve as role models for them. This is a really good, personal program, and I am happy to be part of it.”