Nursing Graduates' Ability to Address Incivility: Kirkpatrick's Level-3 Evaluation

Abstract

BackgroundAddressing incivility in nursing education has an important twofold purpose, to increase civility within the nursing education experience and to lay the groundwork for creating cultures of civility in professional nursing practice. Given the serious impact of incivility, it is imperative to prepare students to foster civility in their nursing practice upon graduation. MethodsIn a previous article, the authors described how a classroom-centered, problem-based learning (PBL) scenario, simulating a nurse-to-nurse uncivil encounter, was used to assess student learning according to Level 1 and Level 2 of Kirkpatrick's Model of Evaluation. This subsequent article presents the findings of a 10-month follow-up study based on Level 3 of Kirkpatrick's Model of Evaluation, describing how knowledge gained from the PBL scenario impacted the nursing practice of new graduates in their workplaces. ResultsThemes are presented regarding the new graduates' experiences with incivility in their nursing practice, how they transferred the PBL knowledge presented in the classroom to their nursing practice, how their behavior has changed since participating in the PBL scenario, and the barriers and benefits to using the PBL scenario knowledge in the practice setting. ConclusionsA classroom-centered PBL scenario was an effective teaching strategy for preparing new graduates to address nurse-to-nurse incivility in the practice setting.