Educational Method for Developing Assessment Skills of Nursing Students

This study aimed to verify the effects of a new instructional method to structure knowledge. The research hypothesis was that “Structured knowledge improves assessment skills of students”. Fifty-five second-year undergraduate students volunteered to participate in this study. They were randomized into either a group that received instructional intervention (n = 19;intervention) or a group that did not (n = 36;non-intervention). A survey and instructional intervention comprised pre-tests, individual instructional intervention, participant self-studies and post-tests. The students attempted one pre- and one post-test task, each comprising concept map drawing and assessment of actual patients with diabetes. Participants who received educational intervention described concept maps regarding the pathophysiology and nursing of diseases, and we taught a learning strategy to understand relationships between concepts and the assumption of clinical assessment. The results of the concept map drawing task showed that post-test structural knowledge scores were significantly higher for the intervention, than the non-intervention group (p p p < 0.01). The educational intervention in this study seemed to augment the ability to identify nursing problems, although we did not teach assessment strategies. The intervention seemed to confer structured knowledge with explicit conditions for applicability. Structured knowledge with explicit conditions and learning how to use knowledge to assess patients before a clinical practicum seemed to augment assessment skills.

The Relationship between Assessment Skills and Nursing Knowledge

This research aimed to clarify the relationship between nursing students’ levels of structural knowledge and assessment skills. Participants were 17 third-year university students majoring in nursing who participated individually in the experiments. The experiments included a nursing-scene task, free-recall task, and sorting task. Experiments were conducted before and after their clinical practice. Each student’s level of structural knowledge was calculated from the free-recall and sorting task responses, and each student’s assessment skill was calculated from the nursing-scene task responses. Levels of structural knowledge were significantly higher in post-examination compared with pre-examination (p p n = 5) had significantly higher scores for their conclusions and reasons than the low-structured group (n = 5) (p p < 0.10). Well-structured knowledge of students in the high-structured group seemed to enable them to acquire and activate highly related information during assessment. Students in the high-structured group apparently made assessments not only by using information given but also by over viewing information comprehensively.