Advanced Health Assessment in Advanced Practice Nursing Programs: Follow-Up Study

Background:   Current literature on advanced health assessment (AHA) courses in advanced practice nursing (APN) programs focuses on two major themes:  teaching strategies and evaluation methods.   Teaching strategies include the use of the internet; standardized patients; practicing health assessments on real patients; and problem based learning.  Evaluation methods include Objective Structured Clinical Examination and standardized patients.  Technologies to improve both teaching and evaluation include using course management platforms, commercial CD tutorials, simulators, videotaping, and online coursework. 

Purpose:  To describe teaching and evaluation strategies of AHA courses in graduate nursing degree programs.

Methods: This descriptive, correlational study comprised a mailed survey to a 100% sample of 375 nursing schools with graduate programs; all are members of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.  The survey comprised 27 questions related to: descriptors of the institution, the APN program, courses, teaching and evaluation strategies, and challenges. 

Results:  46% (173) of the nursing school representatives completed the survey.  Eighty-three percent (144) of the respondents report having a master’s-level APN program.  Virtually all --99% -- of those institutions offer an advanced health assessment course.

Most programs use multiple teaching strategies in the course; those used by more than half of programs include: example videos of AHA techniques (95.1%); faculty demonstrations (93.8%); student return demonstrations (84%); lecture/presentation (78.5%); case-study review (72.9%); group discussions (59.7%); and simulation models (50.7%).

Most programs also use multiple evaluation methods; those used by more than half of the programs include: written exams (95.8%); student return demonstrations (91.7%); lab performance (69.4%); and clinical performance (61.1%).

Conclusions:  Most programs use multiple teaching strategies, with most using traditional pedagogical approaches.  Nearly one-half use computer-assisted instruction and nearly one-fourth use distance education.  Most programs use traditional evaluation methods; with written exams and student return demonstrations being used by more than 90%.  Nearly one-fourth (22.2%) of courses require scholarly papers, and 12.5% require group projects.  More APN programs are using educational and other technology more than previously.  Additional conclusions will also be presented.