Mentors’ implication in clinical learning and assessment of nursing students

Nursing Education in Europe is regulated by law from 2005. Clinical learning comprises at least 50% of the total degree program in nursing. It is necessary rely on professionals nurses involved in the learning process and skills development assessment. The level of implication in learning processes of these professional nurses is very important to ensure good results.

Assessment of University External Internships. Towards a Mixed Model for Measuring the Acquisition of Skills and the Satisfaction of Parties Involved

The continuous improvement of management and assessment processes for curricular external internships has led a group of university teachers specialised in this area to develop a mixed model of measurement that combines the verification of skill acquisition by those students choosing external internships with the satisfaction of the parties involved in that process. They included academics, educational tutors of companies and organisations and administration and services personnel in the latter category. The experience, developed within University of Alicante, has been carried out in the degrees of Business Administration and Management, Business Studies, Economics, Advertising and Public Relations, Sociology and Social Work, all part of the Faculty of Economics and Business. By designing and managing closed standardised interviews and other research tools, validated outside the centre, a system of continuous improvement and quality assurance has been created, clearly contributing to the gradual increase in the number of students with internships in this Faculty, as well as to the improvement in satisfaction, efficiency and efficacy indicators at a global level. As this experience of educational innovation has shown, the acquisition of curricular knowledge, skills, abilities and competences by the students is directly correlated with the satisfaction of those parties involved in a process that takes the student beyond the physical borders of a university campus. Ensuring the latter is a task made easier by the implementation of a mixed assessment method, combining continuous and final assessment, and characterised by its rigorousness and simple management. This report presents that model, subject in turn to a persistent and continuous control, a model all parties involved in the external internships are taking part of. Its short-term results imply an increase, estimated at 15% for the last course, in the number of students choosing curricular internships and, for the medium and long-term, a major interweaving between the academic world and its social and productive environment, both in the business and institutional areas. The potentiality of this assessment model does not lie only in the quality of its measurement tools, but also in the effects from its use in the various groups and in the actions that are carried out as a result of its implementation and which, without any doubt and as it is shown below, are the real guarantee of a continuous improvement.

An electronic record system in nursing education: evaluation and utilization

The main objective of the present work is to analyze the results of the utilization and evaluation of the LORETO Record System (LRS), providing improvement areas in the teaching-learning process and technology, in second year nursing students. A descriptive, prospective, cross sectional study using inferential statics has been carried out on all electronic records reported by 55 nursing students during clinical internships (April 1º-June 26º, 2013). Electronic record average rated 7.22 points (s=0.6; CV=0.083), with differences based on the clinical practice units (p<0,05). Three items assessed did not exceed the quality threshold set at 0.7 (p<0.05). Record Rate exceeds the quality threshold set at 80% for the overall sample, with differences based on the practice units. Only two clinical practice units rated above the minimum threshold (p <0.05). Record of care provision every 3 days did not reach the estimated quality threshold (p <0.05). There is a dichotomy between qualitative and quantitative results of LRS. Improvement areas in theoretical education have been identified. The LRS seems an appropriate learning and assessment tool, although the development of a new APP version and the application of principles of gamification should be explored.

The SAAS-R: A New Instrument to Assess the School Attitudes of Students with High and Low Academic Achievement in Spain

We examined the psychometric properties of the School Attitude Assessment Survey–Revised in a Spanish population (n = 1,398). Confirmatory factor analysis procedures supported the instrument’s five-factor structure. The results of discriminant analysis demonstrated the predictive power of the School Attitude Assessment Survey–Revised scales as regards academic performance. Implications for education and assessment are discussed.