Implementation and evaluation of peer assessment of clinical skills for first year student nurses

Enabling student nurses to learn and develop evidence-based clinical skills is the cornerstone of nursing education programmes. This article describes the implementation of a peer assessment scheme for clinical skills within a skills laboratory in a university school of nursing, and the link between peer assessment and clinical skills development. This was a qualitative evaluative study that used questionnaires for data collection and was undertaken on one cohort of students. Findings showed that nearly half of all the statements made by students were about the positive impact of PACS on their skills learning. Students identified giving and receiving peer feedback, reflection and working with peers in small groups as being particularly valuable in clinical skills learning. Increased confidence was also a dominant finding as was the value of repeated practice in a simulation setting on skills development. This study supports some of the previous literature related to use of simulation and peer assessment but the discussion presented in this article also highlights that the findings of this study contradicts other findings in the literature. What makes this study unique is its contribution to the literature is the link that was established by students between the peer-assessment process and clinical skills learning.

The snapshot pre-registration assessment tool. Part 1: background, literature and research

This is the first of a two-part article that presents a new assessment tool - the snapshot - for pre-registration nurses in clinical practice, that is being used at Kingston University/St George's University of London during year 3 of the Diploma and BSc programmes. A pilot study of the use of the snapshot in a simulation environment had previously been undertaken and as a result of this, the snapshot was piloted as part of continuous clinical assessment in practice on two cohorts of third-year pre-registration student nurses. An evaluative study was undertaken. This article describes the background to the project, the literature and the research methods used to undertake the evaluative research study. Part 2 will focus on the findings and a discussion of these findings mapped against the literature.