Optimum Characteristics of Nursing Students’ Clinical Evaluation: Clinical Nursing Teachers’ Viewpoints in Isfahan University of Medical Sciences

Introduction: Despite importance of evaluating students’ clinical competencies through nursing education program, there is still controversy about optimum characteristics (indices) of clinical evaluation methods and there is no consensus. This study was performed to determine optimum characteristics of clinical competencies’ evaluation and to assess clinical nursing teachers’ viewpoints. Methods: This mixed method study carried out in three subsequent phases in Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Iran. Firstly, the criteria for evaluationg nursing students’ clinical competencies were extracted from different sources such as libraries and databases. In the second phase in which nursing students (n=17), clinical teachers (n=4) and nursing professionals (n=2) participated the extracted criteria were revised, completed and categorized. Finally a 4point Likert scale questionnaire was utilized to get the views of a census sample of 47 clinical nursing teachers about the evaluation criteria. Data were analyzed through qualitative and quantitative methods and descriptive statistics. Results: Qualitative data analysis led to identify 5 main themes and 44 subthemes of criteria (optimum characteristics) for clinical evaluation methods namely criteria for evaluation context, criteria for evaluation content, criteria for evaluation process, criteria for grading students and criteria for evaluation outputs. The maximum and minimum of the mean scores (Standard Deviations) of the clinical nursing teachers’ views about the importance of the criteria were 3.81±0.49 and 2.74±0/9 that were related to “linking the theoretical and clinical education” and “using new information technology” respectively. Conclusion: This study introduces some important characteristic of clinical competency evaluation methods. Considering the high agreement of clinical nursing teachers with importance of the extracted criteria, it would be worthwhile to use them to improve clinical competency evaluation methods for nursing students.