Abstract
Background and Objectives: Nursing licensure examination is considered a gold standard is fast becoming a minimum standard in clinical practice in the nursing profession. A comprehensive literature review facilitates the aggregation of diverse literature from a variety of contexts pertaining to nursing students’ academic performance and its relation to success in nursing licensure examination. This review investigates nursing students’ academic performance and its relation to success in nursing licensure examination.

Methods: CINAHL, Medline, Web of Science, ProQuest— Nursing and Allied Health Database, PubMed, and Science Direct Taylor & Francis databases were searched.

Results: All studies (n=15) were conducted in the United States. Two major themes were derived from the synthesis of the findings: (i) Nursing academic courses and their grades, (ii) Different types of test-taking assessment skills strategies. Conclusion: Nursing academic courses and their grades and different types of test-taking assessment skills strategies are significantly associated with the success of the nursing licensure examination.

Conclusion: More research could deliver further suggestion for nursing programs to develop actions regarding different types of test-taking assessment skills strategies and academic progression policies. This could encourage graduates to pass the nursing licensure examination and improved safe quality nursing care. This review highlights the student’s factors in success for NLE and increasing current effective actions for enhancing NLE readiness.

Key words: Academic performance; core graduation; exit examination; nursing licensure examination, nursing students