The Development and Utilization of a Daily Clinical Assessment Tool for Use in Maternal Child Nursing

The purpose of this project is to develop a clinical evaluation tool to use with nursing students in the maternal child clinical rotation at California State University, Sacramento (CSUS). The current practice of evaluation does not allow for immediate feedback and improvement. The proposed intervention would be to develop a clinical assessment tool to provide more frequent formative evaluation, rather than summative evaluation at mid and final weeks of a clinical rotation. This Daily Clinical Assessment Tool (DCAT) was developed and implemented during the maternal child clinical rotation with a cohort of Second Bachelor's Degree candidates in a condensed, ten-week semester. The data regarding the use of the DCAT to evaluate progress and direct clinical changes is somewhat inconclusive. Constraining factors of the DCAT include feasibility of completing the tool during the clinical day, interrater reliability, acuity and variation of unit rotations, and the ratio of students to faculty. Facilitating factors include a culture of evaluation at CSUS, student expectation and desire of evaluation, and the variety of clinical learning experiences that lend to evaluation. While the authors recognize that there are improvements to be made to future versions of the DCAT, it is also recognized that overall, the DCAT accomplishes one facet of a large student evaluation system.