Using Objective Structured Clinical Examination as a Teaching Tool in a Hybrid Advanced Health Assessment Course.

BACKGROUND: Advanced health assessment is a required course in advanced practice RN (APRN) education, essential to providing the foundation for differential diagnosis (DD) skills and the ability to formulate a plan of care. PROBLEM: Feedback from clinical preceptors revealed that our doctor of nursing practice (DNP) students struggled to make a DD. APPROACH: This educational quality improvement project collected data from 7 cohorts of DNP students in either the Family Nurse Practitioner or Adult Gerontology Nurse Practitioner program to evaluate their readiness for clinical practicums and to inform necessary curriculum revisions. OUTCOMES: Data revealed that students' ability to identify 3 DDs correctly during the summative health assessment objective structured clinical examination was inconsistent. Qualitative data revealed students lacked understanding on how to use results from the physical assessment to formulate a DD. CONCLUSION: The findings of this project corroborate those from the literature that suggest we should teach APRN students DD skills explicitly.

Meeting preceptor expectations to facilitate optimal nurse practitioner student clinical rotations.

Preceptors are essential to nurse practitioner (NP) students' transition from being a student to competent entry-level NP graduate. The literature is replete with data pertaining to the benefits of and barriers to preceptors engaging in the clinical education of NP students, and little has changed in the last two decades in this regard. Therefore, faculty solicited preceptor input to enhance curriculum revision and clinical training preparation. This qualitative inquiry project derived data from interviews with 13 preceptors in a variety of clinical settings. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed using a content analysis method. Recruiting, training, and retaining qualified, willing preceptors are of paramount importance to NP programs. This article describes preceptor expectations of NP students' knowledge, skills, and attitudes for optimal clinical rotation experiences. The results have important implications for innovative NP educational models, developing trust in NP education programs and promoting competency development of the NP student using entrustable professional activities.