Clinical Assessment Of Students Research Articles

Quality of Clinical Nursing Education Programme in Ghana: Preceptors’ Perspectives

Background: Clinical education is an important component of the training of nursing students. Preceptors play a key role in the clinical education of nursing students by providing support for the students during clinical placement. There is dearth of studies in the Ghanaian context that has assessed preceptors’ perception of clinical nursing.Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess preceptors’ perceptions of the quality of clinical nursing education in Northern Ghana.Methods: This study was a cross-sectional survey conducted using an already existing questionnaire. Three hundred and nineteen (319) preceptors recruited from three hospitals participated in the study. A proportional quota sampling technique was used to allocate the sample size to the three hospitals and a simple random sampling technique was used to select the participants. The data were analysed using Stata version 15 and the results were presented using descriptive and inferential statistics.Results: The study findings indicate that the preceptors’ generally perceived that the quality of clinical placement area and clinical assessment were slightly above average as they scored each of them 2.30 on a scale of 0-4 (95% CI:2.21-2.39). The preceptors also perceived that the quality of clinical teaching and learning was average as the they scored it 2.04 on a scale of 0-4 (95% CI:1.95-2.13). Also, the preceptors had a lower level of agreement, 1.75 on a scale of 0-4 (95% CI:2.15 -2.45) regarding teaching and development of the students being the responsibility of only the university.Conclusion: Preceptors perceived that nursing education institutions and clinical facilities need to work together to improve clinical nursing education. This calls for the need for an effective collaboration between clinical facilities and nursing education institutions to develop training programmes for preceptors to improve their skills in clinical teaching and clinical assessment of students.

“Student assessment in the clinical environment – what can we learn from the US experience?”

<p>Clinical legal education has a relatively short history in Australia of some thirty years. By contrast, the US has a much longer and diverse history of clinical pedagogy and has been successfully teaching and assessing students in University legal clinics for over half a century. Traditional law school teaching methodology relies heavily on the Langdellian style of lectures, tutorials and then a form of summative evaluation. Clinical pedagogy is a radical departure from this style and as such assessment of clinical students necessitates a different approach. Clinicians have a duty to offer assessment regimes which complement the clinical technique of law teaching.</p><p>This paper proceeds from the fundamental premise that there is a distinct purpose in assessing clinical students. As clinic is often only offered in the latter years of a law degree, it is the culmination of a student’s law school experience and thus seen by many students as the “testing ground” as to whether they can actually be a lawyer and what sort of lawyer they might be. The underlying objective of assessment in a clinical environment is to measure the development and progress of individual legal skills in each student enrolled in the clinic. This is not a normative measure and thus clinical assessment cannot be based upon objective standards. In this author’s view, assessment in clinic is about the development of legal, personal and ethical skills which is distinctive to the individual student – progressing students in their own personal development track.</p><p>This paper investigates the issue of student assessment in the clinical environment and provides a comparative analysis of the US and Australian clinical assessment experience and the different assessment regimes currently being utilized in the clinical environment. It investigates whether the “younger” clinical programs in Australia can learn from the US experience. It considers what, if anything, might be adapted from that jurisdiction that would be relevant and appropriate for the Australian clinical environment.</p>

The role of theexternal examiner in the assessment of clinical Practice

In the first part of this paper we give a brief overview of the development of the different types of clinical assessment used in the UK. Some general problems related to the assessment of clinical practice are outlined. The second part of the paper focuses on the role of the external examiner in the clinical assessment of students. We outline some of the major problems we encountered as internal and external examiners on the same university-based course in which ‘I-day’ practical assessments were undertaken. We emphasize the particular problems of externally assessing the clinical practice component of the course in this manner and conclude that the continuous assessment model, while not without its own problems, is potentially a more effective approach to student assessment.