ABSTRACT
We report the development of a brief and simple-to-complete clinical placement evaluation scale. Unlike many previous attempts to develop such tools, the one reported here gives reliable numerical scores with a firm empirical foundation. The scoring correlates well between three European countries: UK, Finland, and Germany.
Subject(s)
Education, Nursing , Nursing Evaluation Research/methods , Preceptorship/standards , Finland , Germany , Humans , International Educational Exchange , Preceptorship/organization & administration , Reproducibility of Results , United KingdomABSTRACT
An important, but often neglected, part of any research or audit exercise is the reporting back to participants of the results of that exercise. When feedback is made, it is often of a general, aggregated nature. Considerations of cost and psychological factors usually preclude feedback to individuals. As part of a larger study we have developed a prototype mechanism for providing such individual feedback. This was done by writing a computer program which automatically generated the report, using rules on how to interpret different patterns of responses to a questionnaire. Previous qualitative evaluation had shown a positive response from participating nurses. The current small-scale study reports a more formal evaluation. Participants who received reports on the degree to which their ward was practising primary nursing overwhelmingly found the reports readable, informative, encouraging, accurate and useful.
Subject(s)
Communication , Information Services , Nursing Audit , Nursing Evaluation Research , Nursing Staff, Hospital/standards , Primary Nursing/standards , Software , Delphi Technique , Humans , Reproducibility of Results , Surveys and QuestionnairesABSTRACT
Auditing nursing practice is a time-consuming, error-prone task. Feedback to individuals is highly desirable but usually is not offered. This is particularly difficult in large-scale studies. In this study of 654 wards a new method was attempted. Structured questionnaires were analysed by a computer program and feedback reports generated automatically. Informal evaluations by the initial recipients are positive and the method seems worthy of future development.
Subject(s)
Hospital Units/standards , Management Information Systems , Nursing Audit/methods , Software Validation , HumansABSTRACT
This paper reports our experience of analysing what may well be one of the largest datasets gathered on nursing practice in the United Kingdom. The study produced both quantitative and qualitative data and a method had to be devised both for analysing each form of data and for relating the two. An inexpensive relational database was chosen for the purpose, and experience of using it is reported. Detailed examples are given. We look at the strengths and weaknesses of such a tool, and in general it received a positive evaluation. For many nursing research projects, it offers some advantages over a conventional statistical package, especially in the following areas: offering ease of use, and hence control of the data, by the domain (nursing) specialist; facilitating the analysis of free-text data; allowing the linking of free-text and structured questionnaire data; permitting the testing of conjectures which arise during analysis; handling varying amounts of data per case; providing non-redundant storage of data; permitting the association of machine-readable codes and human-readable labels; and encouraging an exploratory rather than merely analytical approach.
