A comparative study on self, peer and teacher evaluation to evaluate clinical skills of nursing students

Introduction and purposes: Clinical Evaluation of students has been investigated during last two decades and is considered as one of the important and complicated tasks of faculty members and health program instructors. Involving students in evaluation process is an appraisal technique and a diverse resource for data gathering. Therefore, this study is an attempt to compare self peer and clinical teacher evaluation of nursing students' clinical skills in medical-surgical wards of selected hospitals affiliated to Tehran University of Medical Sciences in 2010-201 1.Materials and methods: In this analytical cross-sectional study, sample selection was by census. All junior nurse students attending medical-surgical internship program were selected. Thereafter, at the end of the program, clinical skills of nurse students were evaluated by the self, peer, and clinical teacher. 68 participants (60 students and 8 clinical teachers) completed 110 evaluation forms. Data gathered through a demographic data questionnaire, and students' standard clinical evaluation form. Descriptive (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (paired T-test and Pearson Correlation Coefficient) were used to analyze the data.Results: There was a significant difference between clinical teacher and self evaluation, and between clinical teacher and peer evaluation mean scores. However, there was no significant difference between self- and peer evaluation. Moreover, there was a significant correlation between peer and self-evaluation scores, but no significant correlation between peer and self-evaluation with teacher-evaluation.Conclusion: Since self, peer, and clinical teacher evaluation scores have no significant correlation and but a significant difference, it is indicated that self- and peer-evaluation are not suitable substitutes for clinical teacher evaluation; meanwhile, they could be applied as complementary evaluation methods to evaluate clinical performance of students. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.