Evaluating clinical competence of distant nurse practitioner students

Developing and evaluating core clinical competencies of nurse practitioner students at distant clinical sites requires dialog among the student, the clinical preceptor and University faculty. Students enter our program with diverse backgrounds, experience and interests. Here we demonstrate an innovative online Clinical Development Scale (CDS) that gathers self assessment data from each student, analyzes, organizes and prioritizes competencies to be accomplished in a clinical practicum, produces midterm and final evaluation summaries from data contributed by both student and preceptor and displays action plans developed by students, for meeting deficient competencies for preceptor and faculty approval.