Using the Digital Clinical Experience™ as Evidence for the Accreditation Process of Undergraduate Nursing Programs

Using the Digital Clinical Experience™ as Evidence for the Accreditation Process of Undergraduate Nursing Programs

In nursing education, achieving accreditation ensures good quality and better outcomes for students. Shadow Health and its Digital Clinical Experience™ can play a significant role in presenting evidence for accreditation in nursing programs. This helps meet the criteria for how well students are learning throughout the curriculum.

Here are examples from Shadow Health’s Research Brief, “Using the Digital Clinical Experience™ as Evidence for the Accreditation Process of Undergraduate Nursing Programs,” showing how virtual patient scenarios can fulfill the standards for accreditation.

Evaluation of Teaching Methods

Shadow Health provides a consistent learning experience where students can practice communication and assessment skills in a safe environment. In the Digital Clinical Experience™, students interact with virtual patients, use communication skills, record findings on a digital health record, and discuss their experience afterward. Professors can include this in the curriculum as practice tests, requirements for labs, or even instead of traditional clinical experiences. This covers topics like health assessment, pharmacology, mental health, gerontology, maternal health, pediatrics, and leadership.

Assessing Student Learning at the End of the Program

The Digital Clinical Experience™ offers robust evidence for students’ learning and program outcomes. It examines how well students learn, how they are tested, their clinical experiences, and practice environments. Each task in the Digital Clinical Experience™ gives a score that measures various aspects of how well a student performs in the simulation. The Student Performance Index™ helps measure how well students think clinically. It indicates how students can think like experienced nurses after completing the program. This index measures students’ skills in collecting information, using communication skills, and creating care plans in different situations.

Different Approaches to Health and Safety

The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) Institute and Shadow Health have joined forces. They connect QSEN’s ideas about patient-centered care, teamwork, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, safety, and informatics with the Digital Clinical Experiences™ for Mental Health and Gerontology. These simulations provide students with feedback on how they communicate, collect data, and display care skills. This helps them learn how to improve the quality and safety of nursing care they provide.

You can learn more about this in the whitepaper on how virtual patient scenarios like Shadow Health can aid in the process of accrediting undergraduate nursing programs.

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.

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​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