Evaluation of Nurse Practitioner Students' Performance Skill Development throughout the Curriculum

This presentation will describe how a nurse practitioner program utilized an external clinical skills training and assessment center to complete student skills assessment. This presentation will highlight how a Nurse Practitioner Program utilized a clinical skills training and assessment center to evaluate students’ skills in performing an advanced health assessment at the beginning of the nurse practitioner program and then an advanced assessment and diagnosis mid way through the program.

  The information provided during this presentation will include the sharing of the evaluation processes, the types of data collected, and how this data was used not only for student assessment but also for program assessment. . During this presentation participants will learn how the student assessments were completed using standardized patients and external evaluators. Data collection methods will be discussed along with data analyses methods. Information will be shared on how the evaluation data was collected and analyzed to assess individual student performance and overall student performance during the first level of the nurse practitioner program, and then midway through the program. Future plans will be presented as to how the program plans to use the aggregate data to evaluate student progression and curriculum improvement.  . Details will be shared on how this type of external evaluation can be used as a tool to evaluate individual courses, course instruction methods and the overall nurse practitioner program. During the presentation, student accountability for self evaluation and self reflection on skill development will be emphasized. Methods used to assist students with the review of individual skill performance will be discussed. Tools used to promote individual student professional skill development will be shared. Plans for expanded and ongoing use of external nurse practitioner student evaluation along with program benchmarking will be summarized as well.