Assessing competence during professional experience placements for undergraduate nursing students: A systematic review.

Abstract

Review Objectives To identify and synthesise the best available evidence about the meaningfulness of assessments of competence during the professional experience placement for undergraduate nursing students, with the overarching aim to make recommendations concerning strategies and initiatives that support assessment of competence for undergraduate nursing programs. Review Questions What are undergraduate nurses’ experiences of the clinical assessment of competence? What are registered nurses’/health care professionals experiences of the clinical assessment of competence? Inclusion criteria Types of participants The review will consider studies where the focus is the undergraduate nursing student and their assessors of clinical practice in the professional experience placement. The range of participants includes both the Registered Nurse responsible for assessing student nurses in the professional experience placement and the undergraduate nursing student. The review will also consider faculty, health professionals, accrediting bodies involved in commenting on competence of nursing student performance in the professional experience placement, where appropriate. Phenomena of interest The phenomenon of interest is the experiences of assessing clinical competence of undergraduate nursing students on the professional experience placement by an approved assessor, i.e., the registered nurse. This review will consider studies that include the experience, thoughts, feelings and opinions of the student nurse, clinical assessor, consumers, health professionals, accrediting bodies and faculty related competency based assessment. Types of outcomes The outcomes of this review will include the: •identification of the experiences or experiential accounts of both the assessors and the student nurses as related to competency based assessment of professional experience placements. •expert opinion and perhaps also experiences of the clinical assessor, consumers, health professionals, accrediting bodies and faculty as related to competency based assessment of professional experience placements.