NONPF 40th Annual Meeting
Evaluating Clinical Competency: Meaningful Strategies to Appraise Student Clinical Competency in NP Programs
Objective evaluation of nurse practitioner student clinical skills is to insure improvement in clinical competency throughout their NP program. Implementing sound evaluation methods will not only appraise clinical competency, but will serve to provide rich and meaningful learning opportunities for students. However, capricious and arbitrary evaluation methods will alienate students, obstruct the learning process, and thwart authentic clinical assessment. Online program delivery creates additional challenges in validating clinical competency. While NP faculty provides oversight of the clinical learning environment, evaluation and feedback on students’ clinical performance may be relegated to a preceptor-which has its own hazards. By utilizing a variety of reliable assessment techniques, faculty can successfully integrate evaluative methods to critically appraise competency of NP students.