Development of MiniCEX to assess nurses' clinical skills concerning medication

Abstract

The clinical practice of nurses requires the development of skills that directly imply the safety and quality of care. The Mini Clinical Evaluation Exercise (MiniCEX) is a tool for evaluating clinical practice in real contexts that helps the self-regulation aspect of the learning experience based upon feedback at the end of each evaluated moment. This study aimed to build a MiniCEX for nurses and undergraduate nursing students, on clinical skills in the process of preparing, administering, and monitoring medications. This is developmental research. The theories that supported the methodological route were: Patricia Benner's model for the development of clinical skills in nursing; David Kolb's Experiential learning theory; the Medication System described by Cassiani et al.; the Patient Classification Instrument per complexity of nursing care, according to the area of care, proposed by Fugulin, Gaidzinski and Kurcgant; and, the assumptions of the National Patient Safety Program, focusing on safety in medication practice. Thus, three competencies were organized: preparation, administration, and monitoring of patients using drugs. As feedback is essential in MiniCEX, the studies by Hattie and Timperley, and Hattie and Clarke on feedback in the teaching-learning processes were considered. Thus, it is possible to characterize the MiniCEX outlined as an instrument for educational assessments, capable of developing specific nursing skills, which can be used both for nursing students during the practice of internships, as well as for monitoring and assessing the medicating skills of novice nurses to a given clinical setting.

Keywords

• skill-based education. educational evaluation. clinical procedures. clinical skill. nursing.