For nursing programs, accreditation guides quality and further improvement for the best possible student outcomes. Shadow Health and its Digital Clinical Experience™ can play a vital role in providing undergraduate nursing programs pursuing accreditation with some of the evidence necessary to meet criteria related to student learning outcomes across the curriculum.
Outlined below are some examples from Shadow Health’s Research Brief, Using the Digital Clinical Experience™ as Evidence for the Accreditation Process of Undergraduate Nursing Programs on how virtual patient scenarios can meet accreditation requirements.
Evaluation tools/methodologies for didactic content, laboratory content, and clinical learning experiences
A standardized clinical experience through Shadow Health can help students practice their communication and assessment skills in a safe learning environment. In the Digital Clinical Experience™, students can interview and examine virtual patients, apply therapeutic communication skills, synthesize their findings on an electronic health record, and engage in debriefing activities following virtual patient examination. Faculty can integrate the Digital Clinical Experience™ in their curriculum as formative assessments, prerequisites for entry to laboratory sessions, or replace traditional clinical experiences. This includes courses in the curriculum like health assessment, pharmacology, mental health, gerontology, maternal health, pediatrics, and leadership.
End-of-program student learning outcomes that can be identified and evaluated
The Digital Clinical Experience™ can provide substantial evidence to support the end-of-program student learning and program outcomes through direct learning activities, evaluation methodologies, clinical learning experiences, and practice learning environments. Each assignment of the Digital Clinical Experience™ contains a validated score that consolidates several dimensions of student performance on the simulation. The Student Performance Index™ can show valid and reliable measurement of relevant student learning outcomes as a measure of clinical reasoning. Shadow Health’s Student Performance Index™ evaluates each student’s clinical reasoning abilities against the level expected of a high-performing graduate after their program. The Student Performance Index™ automatically assesses a student’s abilities in collecting subjective and objective data, applying therapeutic communication, and developing care plans across Shadow Health undergraduate products.
Diverse concepts, best practices, and nationally established patient health and safety goals
The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) Institute has partnered with Shadow Health to map the QSEN competencies of patient-centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, safety, and informatics to the Undergraduate Mental Health and Gerontology Digital Clinical Experiences™. These simulations provide students with detailed feedback on how their performance on subjective data collection, objective data collection, and therapeutic communication demonstrates the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to continuously improve the quality and safety of a student nurse. Through this feedback, students can understand and improve their skills to improve the quality and safety of the nursing care that they provide.
Read more in the whitepaper here on how virtual patient scenarios like Shadow Health can further help the undergraduate nursing accreditation process
