Evaluation of students' clinical skills: Agreement of self-assessment and clinical teacher assessment scores

Abstract Introduction: The most essential part of any training program is evaluation, because by doing so, the shortcomings of the program can be realized and dealt with. Clinical evaluation of students is one of the fundamental challenges in clinical nursing education. Nowadays, self-evaluation is proposed as a useful method along with student evaluation by teacher. Objective: This study was performed to determine the agreement between self and clinical teacher evaluation of nursing students’ clinical skills. Methods: In this descriptive cross -sectional study, 79 nursing students from of two to eight semester were chosen by stratified systematic random sampling method. At the end of the training, students’ clinical skills were evaluated by themselves and clinical teachers. The data gathering instruments were evaluation forms used in college of nursing. Descriptive and inferential statistics (Variance analysis, Spearman correlation and inner group correlation square) were used for data analysis. Results: Based on study results, there was no significant difference between self and clinical teachers’ evaluation in general and specific-general items. Also a high agreement and correlation were found between two assessment methods (P=0.0001, ICC= 0.916). Conclusion: According to significant correlation between two different methods of assessment, it is suggested to increase the accuracy of clinical assessment scores and student satisfaction, self-assessment be used in addition to clinical teacher assessment. Perhaps this method may promote clinical evaluation methods.