Assessing the clinical skills performance of nursing students

This article records the development of assessment criteria for the clinical skills performance by pre-registration nursing students within a problem-based learning curriculum. Questionnaires allowed informally established provisional criteria to be exposed to students, practitioners and lecturers from all branches. Any opinions given and suggestions made by the participants were taken into account and the improved set of criteria was discussed in branch-specific focus groups, thus further enhancing them. A pilot study with a group of children's nursing students and their supervisors was set up to test the assessment criteria in practice. The students' skills performances were assessed by their supervisors as well as by themselves. Interviews with all participants tested the accuracy of the criteria, most of which were supported by the data. The improved criteria are used as part of the summative assessment of practice within a problem-based nursing curriculum.