title: A systematic review of clinical assessment for undergraduate nursing students.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Consolidated clinical practicum prepares pre-registration nursing students to function as beginning practitioners. The clinical competencies of final-year nursing students provide a key indication of professional standards of practice and patient safety. Thus, clinical assessment of nursing students is a crucial issue for educators and administrators.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The aim of this systematic review was to explore the clinical competency assessment for undergraduate nursing students.
  
  
  METHODS
  PubMed, CINAHL, ScienceDirect, Web of Science, and EBSCO were systematically searched from January 2000 to December 2013.
  
  
  METHODS
  The systematic review was in line with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. Published quantitative and qualitative studies that examined clinical assessment practices and tools used in clinical nursing education were retrieved. Quality assessment, data extraction, and analysis were completed on all included studies.
  
  
  RESULTS
  This review screened 2073 titles, abstracts and full-text records, resulting in 33 included studies. Two reviewers assessed the quality of the included studies. Fourteen quantitative and qualitative studies were identified for this evaluation. The evidence was ordered into emergent themes; the overarching themes were current practices in clinical assessment, issues of learning and assessment, development of assessment tools, and reliability and validity of assessment tools.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  There is a need to develop a holistic clinical assessment tool with reasonable level of validity and reliability. Clinical assessment is a robust activity and requires collaboration between clinical partners and academia to enhance the clinical experiences of students, the professional development of preceptors, and the clinical credibility of academics.
authors.affiliation: Alice Centre for Nursing Studies, Level 2, Clinical Research Centre, Block MD 11,10 Medical Drive, Singapore; School of Health Sciences, Jonkoping University, Sweden, Box 1026, SE-551 11 Jönköping, Sweden. Electronic address: nurwux@nus.edu.sg.
authors.forename: Xi Vivien
authors.initials: XV
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: School of Health Sciences, Jonkoping University, Sweden, Box 1026, SE-551 11 Jönköping, Sweden.
authors.forename: Karin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Enskär
authors.affiliation: Alice Centre for Nursing Studies, Level 2, Clinical Research Centre, Block MD 11,10 Medical Drive, Singapore.
authors.forename: Cindy Ching Siang
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Alice Centre for Nursing Studies, Level 2, Clinical Research Centre, Block MD 11,10 Medical Drive, Singapore.
authors.forename: Wenru
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D002983:Clinical Competence; D004508:Education, Nursing, Baccalaureate; D004521:Educational Measurement; D006801:Humans; D015403:Nursing Evaluation Research; D011231:Preceptorship; D036301:Qualitative Research; D013338:Students, Nursing
keywords: Assessment standards; Clinical assessment practices; Clinical assessment tool; Clinical competence; Preceptorship; Undergraduate nursing students