Mastering Clinical Skills: Rapid Cycle Deliberate Practice Skills Validation with Nurse Practitioner Students

Validating skills competence is essential in advanced practice nursing education. Distance-based programs often pair asynchronous teaching with on-campus validation. This produces high anxiety with mediocre performance requiring teaching during the validation. Rapid cycle deliberate practice (RCDP) is founded on principles of repeated performance, rigorous assessment, and real-time feedback. In this study, the validation process was redesigned using RCDP principles. More than 100 students participated across 2 cohorts. Feedback revealed high levels of confidence and satisfaction with the method. RCDP is an effective tool for nurse educators teaching distance-based nurse practitioner students. Published by Elsevier Inc.