Abstract
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) new Essentials is guiding nursing academia toward an innovative framework aimed at changing the way we educate nursing students and assess their learning to prepare practice-ready nurses (AACN, 2021). This project aimed to examine qualitative evaluation methods for competency-based education (CBE) clinical outcomes. Purpose & Significance Methods Internal and community stakeholders in population health and interprofessional education collaboratively designed clinical checkpoints as embedded activities involving CBE pedagogy. Over the course of three population clinical rotations, structured clinical checkpoint activities were leveled to Bloom's Taxonomy of learning and mapped to Essentials Domains 3 and 6 following an introduce-reinforce-demonstrate scaffolded approach 1,2. Competency-based assessment during practicums included summative and formative approaches utilizing observation, coaching and feedback. Students provided weekly written reflections in the form of field notes evaluated using a rubric. Rubric-guided reflections support clinical judgment development 3. Results Year one qualitative results (n=26) provided student field note data on the checkpoint strategy, the competency-based approach, learning barriers and self-confidence in their new skills. This project progressed over three years involving an iterative quality improvement process integrating student, faculty, and stakeholder feedback for enhanced future applications and improved alignment of the competency-based pedagogy.