Collaboration readiness: Developing standards for interprofessional formative assessment.

BACKGROUND: Graduate nursing education strives to promote collaborative practice on interprofessional teams. However, measuring collaboration during formative stages of professional development is rare. Few assessments are available to determine whether graduates of nursing education programs have met the required accreditation benchmarks. This project evaluates two performance standards for assessing collaboration during formative assessments. METHOD: Formative assessment of communication and collaboration skills was explored for 62 entry-level Master's students in nursing, using a team-based objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) involving two patient simulations and assessment checklists, and comparing normative (relative standard) and criterion-referenced (absolute standard) methods. RESULTS: Mean percentages of behaviors using the normative approach indicated a range of performance levels for particular communication and collaboration behaviors. Criterion-referenced standards were higher than normative standards from actual student performance. CONCLUSION: This method improves assessment of collaboration through OSCEs using normative and criterion-referenced standards. We recommend using both methods jointly when setting standards or qualifying scores.

Addressing the Gap, Advancing the Knowledge: Guidance for the Abstract Reviewer.

Conferences often offer a wide variety of informative podium, expert panel, and poster presentations. Conference planners use an abstract review process to select abstracts for the presentations. Although guidance exists for writing abstracts, much less information is available on reviewing abstracts and what constitutes an appropriate review. This article provides an overview of the role of an abstract reviewer and information that potential reviewers can use to improve the quality of their reviews. A competent reviewer should possess current knowledge of the profession and working knowledge of research methodology, data collection strategies, and analyses to assess an abstract. Abstract reviewers should consider the abstract in the context of the planned conference attendees, remain objective throughout the review process, and complete the review in a timely manner. Conference planners rely on objective reviews to ensure the selection of quality abstracts, which can lead to a successful conference that advances professional knowledge.