Different studies have identified which skills are most frequently used by nurses in clinical practice. Moreover, the question of whether too many physical assessment skills are being taught in undergraduate nursing education has been raised. ĭespite the importance of mastering physical assessment skills within health assessment processes, research shows that nurses only use a limited range of their learned physical assessment skills in clinical practice. As such, health assessments are vital for the nurse’s scope of practice. Subsequently, the nurse collaborates with the patient to identify current care needs, followed by clinical decision-making to determine appropriate nursing interventions. Through a systematic and structured approach, a full and comprehensive health assessment entails a) physical assessment, where the nurse uses a range of assessment skills to collect the needed objective information, and b) history taking, where the nurse uses communication skills to inquire subjective information. Performing health assessments includes a collaboration between the nurse and the patient, where the focus is on assessing the health situation and collecting objective information about the patient and subjective information from the patient. Systematic and structured health assessment is a core element of nursing competence, crucial for the nurse’s clinical reasoning capacity and ability to provide person-centred holistic care. Nursing competence is a multidimensional and dynamic concept encompassing nurse’s knowledge, understanding, judgment, and cognitive, technical, psychomotor, and interpersonal skills. Undergraduate nursing education, with its combination of theoretical and practical learning objectives and outcomes, intends to provide graduated nurses with the necessary nursing competence to provide safe and high-quality patient care. The overall quality of patient care provided can depend on the availability of competent nurses. Highly skilled and competent nurses are increasingly needed in all clinical healthcare contexts due to demographic population projections, emerging new treatment modalities and technologies, task shiftings and new professional responsibilities, and global health challenges. Spaced repetition and access to digital resources are suggested pedagogical approaches to enhance student confidence in the use of assessment skills within academic and clinical contexts. Conclusionīasic physical assessment skills are an important component of nursing competence and can be considered one of the pillars of person-centered care, as proposed by the Fundamentals of Care framework. The regression analysis showed that confidence in performing physical assessment skills, the usefulness of the Suite of Mobile Learning Tools, and a higher nursing competence at the start of clinical rotation were positively associated with overall nursing competence. The Suite of Mobile Learning Tools was evaluated as being useful for learning physical assessment. ResultsĪfter the clinical rotation, both student groups reported changes in nursing competence and confidence in performing physical assessment skills, with statistically significant moderate or large changes in all areas. The STROBE guidelines for cohort studies were followed for study reporting. Linear regression analysis was used to identify factors associated with changes in nursing competence after clinical rotation. The students voluntarily used the Suite of Mobile Learning Tools for the learning of physical assessment. The Nurse Professional Competence scale short form was used to investigate students’ self-reported changes in nursing competence, and a study-specific questionnaire was used to investigate students’ confidence concerning performing physical assessments. During autumn 2019 and spring 2020, 72 s-year nursing students and 99 third-year students participated in the study. MethodsĪ quantitative cohort study with an explorative pre-and post-test design. Therefore, this study explores changes in nursing competence, factors associated with changes after clinical rotations, and whether a Suite of Mobile Learning Tools supports changes in confident use of basic physical assessment skills. However, in nursing education, using physical assessment skills is challenging for nursing students who struggle to apply these skills comprehensively in a clinical rotation. Physical assessment skills are vital in nurses' assessment of patient care needs. The quality of nursing care in different healthcare contexts can be associated with the level of available nursing competence.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |