ARC

Description of Good Assessment Practice

Title: Dr.
Name: Vico C L CHIANG
Academic Position: Teaching staff
Name of Institution:
Country:
Discipline: Medicine
Department/School:
Course title: Multiple courses on nursing care of the adult across the 4-year programme of Bachelor of Nursing (Hon)
Course code:
Class size: 101 or above
Course Year: Year 1 – Year 4
Assessment Title: Scenario-based experiential learning with the advanced human patient simulators (HPS)
Assessment Type: Formative
Time allowed for assessment: Nursing skills laboratory sessions (2 hours each session)
Target:
Learning outcomes of the assessment practice: Experiential Learning
Nursing is a practical profession. Competent clinical skills and critical thinking for clinical decision making are the essential fundamentals for all nursing students in the tertiary education settings to achieve. Traditionally these skills have been taught to students through demonstration and re-demonstration, clinical assessment, and feedback in the laboratories or real clinical settings. Experiential learning plays the core teaching and learning strategy for students to develop such clinical skills during the 4-year Bachelor of Nursing (Hon) programme at HKU. With technological advances in the 21st century, the opportunities and tools available for teachers and students to more effectively teach and learn under the philosophy of experiential learning have even been broadened.

In 2009, the Department of Nursing Studies acquired five state-of-the-art human patient simulators (HPS) in five nursing skills laboratories for students to develop competent clinical and critical thinking skills for the professional care of patients. These HPS are advanced (“high fidelity”) simulators which are capable of simulating human physiological responses like respiratory movements and vital signs, as well as being able to verbally interact with students during the scenario-based practice. These HPS are also programmable for particular learning scenarios, e.g. a patient in shock, which are controlled by teachers to interact with and respond to students’ immediate nursing interventions.

Debriefing
In addition to the above advanced simulation for teaching and learning, an important strength of the HPS system is its powerful capability which enhances the debriefing of students after their simulation practice. The system comes with an sophisticated A-V system which records the entire practice of students from two different angles. The recorded practice is then used by the instructors to debrief students for their strengths and weaknesses identified in the simulated practice. This functions as a powerful medium of learning and also a way of formative assessment for students to receive immediate feedback from the instructors, so as to reinforce the experiential learning in developing their clinical critical thinking and nursing skills.

Evaluation and Future Work
This new method of experiential learning is being systematically evaluated under a TDG project to identify room and opportunities for future development and improvement of the curriculum, as well as a tool for formative assessment.
Key features and principles of the assessment practice:
What are the best things about this assessment method?
What are the challenges in implementing this assessment method?
What do your students think about this assessment method? (Any evaluation?)
Plans for changes/developments in future (if any):
Attachment:
Creation date: 2010-02-05 13:38:22