title: The development and testing of a competency-focused psychiatric nursing clinical evaluation instrument.
abstract: This article presents the development of a competency-focused psychiatric clinical evaluation instrument for the junior year of a baccalaureate program. Initially, 80 competencies were identified and categorized into six subscales. Competency achievement was measured by the Bondy Criterion Matrix (1983). Pilot setting generated an overall alpha (alpha) of 0.89 with item reliabilities ranging from 0.16 to 0.95. Testing of the revised Psychiatric Nursing Performance Appraisal Instrument (PsychNPAI) with another group of students (N = 51) generated an overall alpha = 0.96. Subscale alphas ranged from 0.82 to 0.92. These clinical subscales correlated significantly with related aspects of the didactic content in the course. The National League for Nursing Psychiatric Achievement Test correlated significantly with the overall course grade but not with PsychNPAI. The faculty and students perceive that the PsychNPAI clarifies expected outcomes and increases confidence in performance appraisal.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nursing, University of Central Arkansas, Conway 72035-0001, USA.
authors.forename: K N
authors.initials: KN
authors.lastname: Bondy
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Jenkins
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Seymour
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lancaster
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ishee
mesh_terms: D002983:Clinical Competence; D003162:Competency-Based Education; D003479:Curriculum; D004508:Education, Nursing, Baccalaureate; D004521:Educational Measurement; D006801:Humans; D015403:Nursing Evaluation Research; D011568:Psychiatric Nursing / Q000193:education*; D014481:United States