Exploring the potential benefits to stakeholders of an online nursing clinical competency workbook in a primary care undergraduate nurse clinical practicum setting in Ireland
Pearse Murphy
Athlone Institute of Technology Ireland, Ireland
: J Nurs Patient Care
Abstract
This paper sets out to explore how piloting the use of an electronic student nurse clinical competency workbook compared to the traditional paper based student nurse clinical competency workbook in a primary care clinical practicum setting in Ireland is received by the stakeholders involved. Irish nurses are trained on a four-year bachelor of science programme in nursing which is regulated by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland (nmbi www.nmbi.ie). These programmes are run in a partnership between the 13 higher education institutes (HEIs) and the national health service in Ireland called the Health Service Executive (hse www. hse.ie). On average over the four years’ students spend 50% of their time in the HEI and 50% in the HSE. Traditionally paper based student nurse clinical competency workbooks are used to assess and pass student nurse competency on clinical placement. These competencies are signed off in the paper based student nurse competency workbook by the preceptor nurse assigned to each student in each clinical placement. Paper based student nurse competency workbooks are prone to many problems such as getting lost, issues with clinicians / students handwriting and issues of irregularities in their completion. In addition, the question of contemporaneous visibility of progress through placement practicum for all the stakeholders in the student learning network such as college lecturers, preceptors, clinical placement coordinators and students is limited. This study will pilot an online student nurse clinical competency workbook in a primary care placement. Feedback and analysis of its benefits or otherwise compared to the incumbent paper based system will be gleaned from the stakeholders involved in the student learning network. It is hoped the conclusions arrived at will assist decisions about further rollout of the online nursing clinical competency workbook throughout the four years of the programme.
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