ORLANDO, Fla. — New data from the Florida Center for Nursing (FCN) shows that Florida ranked last in the nation in 2024 for first-time pass rates on the National Council Licensure Examination for both registered nurses (RN) and practical nurses (PN).

The data came from FCN’s "State of Nursing Education in Florida 2025" report, which serves to provide information about the nursing education programs in the sunshine state.

That includes information from capacity to enrollment to the number of graduates, to information regarding NCLEX performance for 2024.

Nursing students are required to pass the NCLEX to become a registered nurse, and, according to FCN, to be able to “fill both existing and new positions within the nursing field.”

But the Sunshine State’s pass rate for students training to become registered nurses was 84.9% last year, compared to the national average of 91.16%.

The average pass-rate for those wanting to become practical nurses was 80.78%, below the national average of 88.38%.

These lower-than-normal test scores come amid a looming nurse shortage that some nursing executives say could still use some improvement.

Anytime she faces a big life event, Santana Louis does her morning ritual in her mother’s honor.

“This is where I usually light a candle for her,” said the 26-year-old nurse technician and soon-to-be registered nurse at AdventHealth Orlando.

Her mother Marie had always wanted to be a nurse. When Louis was a child, her mother was in school to be a licensed practical nurse.

She said she remembers watching as her mother would practice checking her vitals with a stethoscope.

But when her mother’s kidneys started to fail, she was forced to give up her dream of becoming a nurse.

That’s when Louis decided she wanted to become a nurse to finish what her mother had started.

“I take her to work with me every single day, and it means the entire world to me to be able to give this to her,” Louis said.

On her first day of nursing school at Valencia College, Louis’ mother passed away.

At that moment, she knew she had a choice to make — and Louis said she wasn’t going to let what happened stop her from pursuing her dream.

“I didn’t get mine back and because I didn’t get my mother back, I am so determined to make sure that everybody can get theirs back,” she said.

Since then, Louis has graduated from nursing school, passed the NCLEX on the first try, and in less than three weeks, she will be entering her new role as a registered nurse, at a time when the nursing profession is under a great deal of pressure.

The soon-to-be RN said that even though it’s great to see an influx of nursing students at the hospital, as long as they’re not passing the exam, it won’t fill the nursing vacancies.

It was a point that was emphasized by Florida Center for Nursing Executive Director Dr. Rayna Letourneau.

“That gap between Florida’s pass rate and the national pass rate was widest in the 2020 to 2021 years," she said. "We are closing that gap. In 2024, we’ve seen that gap close, and it does look like we’re heading in the right direction, but we’re still underperforming, and so it is alarming."

Among the factors that she believes contributed to this downward trend in pass rates is a fake nursing diploma scheme that created an illegal shortcut for aspiring nurses to get licensed and find employment between 2016 and 2021.

Outside of fraudulent activity, Letourneau said she believes that there is a correlation between the length of time between a nursing student’s graduation date and the date that they take the NCLEX.

“The longer a graduate waits to take the test, the less likely they are to pass on that first attempt," she said. "And we have data in our report that clearly shows that."

During the week of Feb. 10, AdventHealth announced it had “reached a major milestone by welcoming its 100,000th team member” to its workforce.

According to the release, the workforce has grown exponentially over the past four years, by hiring more than 30,000 team members — from labor and delivery nurses and patient liaisons, to laparoscopic surgeons and even chaplains.

Louis said despite the nurse shortage, she has noticed that increase in the workforce in the orthopedics department where she works, from nurse technicians to custodians.

“We are all branches to a health care tree that has roots in the ground and we all play an important role in caring for the patient,” she said.

And whenever she needs a pick-me-up, she says speaking to her mother always gives her courage.

“I just take a moment to sit with her and talk with her and it reminds me of why I’m doing this," she said. "And especially with everything happening in the world, everything happening in health care, sometimes we need a moment to just kind of sit and remember why we’re doing this."