Peer Evaluators for Clinical Evaluation of Students, Access to Evaluation Data and Methods in Nursing Education
Access to Evaluation Data and Methods Peer Evaluators for Clinical Evaluation of Students in Nursing Education, Evaluation Timing: Formative and Summative Evaluation in Nursing Education, In Clinical Performance, Access to Evaluation Data and Privacy Considerations, Clinical Evaluation Methods and Tools in Nursing Education.
Peer Evaluators for Clinical Evaluation of Students in Nursing Education
Peer evaluation can help students develop collaborative skills, build communication abilities, and promote professional responsibility. Students have described value in peer review roles, but also indicate the need for faculty support and clear guidelines for peer review (Burgess, Roberts, Black, & Mellis, 2013).
As some debate the appropriateness of having student peers act as evaluators in the clinical setting, student peers should only evaluate competencies and assignments that they are prepared to judge. A potential disadvantage is that peers may be biased in providing only favorable information about student colleagues or may have unrealistic expectations of their student colleagues.
Providing students with this peer evaluation opportunity and then appropriately weighting the contribution can be a reasonable practice (Boehm & Bonnel, 2010). Peer review, an important component of team and group work, includes learning to share thoughtful, objective critique against standards such as rubrics.
Providing student peers opportunities to critique and give feedback to each other can also be a team learning opportunity. Faculty can help students appreciate the importance of peer review, use basic rubrics, and practice professional peer communication (Institute of Medicine, 2014).
Patients Satisfaction Data Regarding Clinical Performance of Students in Nursing Education
Patients provide data from the product consumer viewpoint. Patient satisfaction is considered an important marker in quality health care and can be considered as part of student evaluation. Judgments about student performance are made from patients’ personal experiences and data should be weighted for their value.
Patients often have positive comments to make about their students, which can be positive for the students to hear. Particularly as health care moves to incorporate patients into stronger team member roles, their perceptions of student care can add value.
Evaluation Timing: Formative and Summative Evaluation in Nursing Education in Clinical Performance
Faculty must consider the appropriate timing of evaluation and student feedback. Formative evaluation focuses on the process of student development during the clinical activity, whereas summative evaluation comes at the conclusion of a specified clinical activity to determine student accomplishment. Formative evaluation can assist in diagnosing student problems and learning needs.
Appropriate feedback enables students to learn from their mistakes and allows for growth and improvement in behavior. Summative evaluation attests to competency attainment or meeting of designated objectives. All parties involved in the clinical performance evaluation should be aware of evaluation time frames at the outset.
Timely feedback to students from faculty, both ongoing and formally scheduled, decreases the risk of unexpected evaluation results. Ongoing formative evaluations keep students and faculty aware of the progress toward attainment of learning outcomes and promote opportunities for goal setting.
This early intervention by a faculty member may provide needed direction for improvement and prevent a student from receiving an unsatisfactory evaluation in clinical performance.
Access to Evaluation Data and Privacy Considerations
There are both ethical and legal issues relevant to privacy of evaluation data that can affect the student, faculty, and institution. Before conducting clinical evaluations, the educator must determine who will have access to data. In most cases, detailed evaluative data are shared only between the faculty member and the individual student.
Program policy should identify who additionally may have access to the evaluation and how evaluative information will be stored and for how long. Evaluative data should be stored in a secure area. As designated by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, students 18 years of age or older or in postsecondary schools have the right to inspect records maintained by a school (US Department of Education, 2013).
A school’s program materials such as catalogues and handbooks can be tools to ensure the creation of reasonable and prudent policies that are in compliance with legal and accrediting guidelines. Additionally anecdotal notes, text-based summaries of student performance, should be objectively written as they have potential to be subpoenaed in legal proceedings.
Privacy of written anecdotal notes and computer documents or mobile device notes also need to be maintained. Inadequate security of this information could lead to a breach of student privacy. The need to protect patient privacy can also become an issue, particularly when evaluating students’ use of electronic health records.
Although protecting health information privacy for patients, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act may create challenges for faculty and students in accessing written clinical data.
Because electronic health records are an important component of student learning, faculty need to be familiar with the guidelines and procedures that clinical agencies have developed for students and faculty to access needed patient care documents.
Ongoing discussions about students’ electronic record use and its role in evaluation are important to future clinicians (Niederhauser, Schoessler, Gubrud Howe, Magnussen, & Codier, 2012). If clinical access to electronic health records is limited, another way to evaluate the student’s ability is to provide simulations using those commercial products designed to teach about the electronic health record.
Clinical Evaluation Methods and Tools in Nursing Education
Many methods and tools are used to measure learning in the clinical setting. A variety of approaches should be incorporated in clinical evaluation, including cognitive, psychomotor, and affective considerations as well as cultural competence and ethical decision making (Gaberson, Oermann, & Shellenberger, 2014).
Additionally, educators cannot ignore the social connotations of grading, including the effect that evaluation has on the learning process and student motivation (Walvoord et al., 2010). The aim of the evaluation is to provide an objective report on the quality of the clinical performance. Faculty need to be aware that potential exists for evaluation of students’ clinical performance to be subjective and inconsistent.
Even with “objective” instruments based on measurable and observable behavior, subjectivity can still be introduced into a tool that is viewed as objective. Faculty should be sensitive to the forces that contribute to the subjective side of evaluation as they strive for fairness and consistency (Oermann & Gaberson, 2014).
Fair and reasonable evaluation of students in clinical settings requires the use of appropriate evaluation tools that are ideally effective for faculty to use. In a synthesis of the literature, Krautscheid , Moceri, Stragnell , Manthey, and Neal (2014) summarized that much variability exists in clinical evaluation tools.
Although common agreements were found that tools needed to include criterion based, clear standards and be consistent with program objectives and mission, common challenges were identified to include evaluator bias, subjectivity, and misinterpretation of guidelines.
The authors summarized that the best tools are reliable clinical tools that guide in determining how well students meet objectives, verify their competency as safe practitioners, and allow opportunities for formative and summative feedback.
Any evaluation instrument used to measure clinical learning and performance should have criteria that are consistent with course objectives and the teaching institution’s purpose and philosophy. Attention to student clinical progress, not only across semesters but across a program, can be considered with similar, consistent evaluation processes and tools that progress across the program (Bonnel & Smith, 2010).
Faculty teams should be engaged in ongoing discussions about the tools they choose to use and their purposes. Ongoing orientation and practice with the tools and ratings are recommended (Krautscheid et al., 2014). Faculty must make decisions about using these instruments according to their purpose for clinical evaluation. Primary strategies for the evaluation of clinical practice include:
(1) observation
(2) written communication
(3) oral communication
(4) simulation
(5) self evaluation.
Because clinical practice is complex, a combination of methods used over time is indicated and helps support a fair and reasonable evaluation.