Using Telehealth Technology to Evaluate Clinical Competency of Nurse Practitioner Students

With the rapid growth in distance APN education programs, assessment of distant NP student clinical competency and evaluation of distance learning environments are common points of controversy among APN faculty.  The purpose of this pilot project is to evaluate the use of HIPAA secure, High Definition video technology to evaluate NP student clinical performance and distance learning clinical environments.  Methodology: The Virtual Care Works (VCW) platform, a HIPAA compliant, private, broadband telehealth network, will be used to conduct distance site visits of Nurse Practitioner (NP) students during the fall of 2013 and spring of 2014. Throughout this pilot project, one faculty member will be onsite with the student with a second faculty member simultaneously interacting with the student and preceptor over a secure Internet connection from a distant site. Evaluation of the telehealth site visits will include a survey to obtain student and preceptor feedback regarding the telehealth site visit experience.  Additionally, analysis of the interrater reliability of student evaluation ratings between the distant and onsite faculty visitors will be conducted and barriers to implementation will be described. The results of this pilot project will help to determine future practices for the evaluation of all distant NP student clinical experiences and clinical learning environments at this university. 

Content Outline for the presentation:

      I.         Background issues related to the evaluation of clinical competency for distance NP students

     II.         Overview of VCW technology and how it was used to evaluate NP students with recorded demonstration

   III.         Student and Preceptor survey results

   IV.         Pros and Cons of using telehealth to evaluate students

     V.         Recommendations