Close your eyes, take you back
Back to last your Professional Development, remember all the pieces
I don’t know about yours, here’s how mine went
Arrive early morning, walk in to coffee and fruit, no major sugar items so we don’t crash
Look around, all faculty from every department, all in the same large room
6 hours of training scheduled, 4 different topics, with a few small breaks and a lunch
Welcome, 1st topic starts
Fire up the powerpoint, try to take notes as they talk and pray they’re not monotone, inflection is important
I need another cup of coffee just thinking about it
What if we could do better? What if there were better ways to learn?
I want to shift gears and talk about not our learning, but our students for a minute
Studies showing 23% of new RNs don’t have entry-level competency and don’t make clinical judgements as effectively as experienced nurses.
And it can take years before nurses can make high-quality clinical judgements, putting patients at risk.
A Job Analysis from 2012-2014 by NCSBN of working RNs looked at the knowledge, skills, and abilities
Found more than 46% of entry-level tasks required clinical judgement
Found more than 30% of entry level tasks require problem solving and critical thinking
New assessment required new questions types
The new question types are focused on Real World Information - Charts including health history, nurses notes, vital signs, and lab results, and away from multiple choice questions in favor of open ended responses that often allowed partial credit
They had to simulate the real world the new nurse would see on day 1 as closely as possible to assess whether they were ready to enter it
Our teaching styles and assessment have been focused on that knowledge
Information mainly coming from textbooks and other readings
The instructor teaching from the front of the classroom for hours at a time, with a few breaks, while the students feverishly try to take notes and follow along
Our assessments have been focused on the Multiple Choice responses that dominated the NCLEX
Only a small percentage that looked at any alternate formats
Our results were good, on the old test
A new generation of questions needs a new generation of teaching styles and teaching tools
NCLEX questions focusing on Real World Information require the students to encounter that real world information in the classroom
A focus on Clinical Judgement in education requires teaching that allows clinical judgement
Recommendations by the NCSBN include their Action Model
This model combines the knowledge the student has with real world factors such as the situation of the patient and the complexity of the environment
This action model works best when it is combined with prompts from an instructor with more experience
These prompts allow the student to process the situation themselves then gain feedback and expertise from the instructor
We need to safely simulate a real world environment in an atmosphere where it’s safe to be wrong
Nurses need new questions focusing on real world interactions on their licensing test to identify that they are capable of working effectively on day 1
Teachers need new techniques and new tools showing those same real world interactions so the students are comfortable with them before they get to the exam
Why can’t we use those same real world interactions for our Professional Development to teach these new tools and techniques to the teachers?
Studies show it takes 50 hours to master a subject to the point it can be used in a real life atmosphere
No I’m not saying we need to sit through 50 hours of talking heads, but we have to Assess our needs, Plan our goals and outcomes, implement our curriculum changes in a test phase, and evaluate the outcome.
Remembering that last PD, I had 1.5 hours with a talking head, then expect me to go
What happens when we get to the end of the Evaluation phase and it didn’t work how we wanted, but we’re not sure what needs to be changed?
We’ve always been left to our own devices to wander around in the dark with trial and error until we either stumble upon the solution, or more often than not decide it’s not worth the effort and just go back to what we were doing before.
Let’s look at a model using these real world tools for PD – we’re going to look at how we can recreate some of these new question types
What happens when we get to the end of the Evaluation phase and it didn’t work how we wanted, but we’re not sure what needs to be changed?
We’ve always been left to our own devices to wander around in the dark with trial and error until we either stumble upon the solution, or more often than not decide it’s not worth the effort and just go back to what we were doing before.
Let’s look at a model using these real world tools for PD – we’re going to look at how we can recreate some of these new question types
Let’s meet back up for some active learning to get into the nuts and bolts
Because you already have the introduction and the written instructions you have a jump start on the basics of how – lets grab a computer and start actually building the questions –
and you brought along some examples from your own field
We’re going to have an expert on that content to help you fit your specific information into these question types
Or offer some ideas on alternate question types that may fit these needs
This is that action model we used with the students earlier using those real world prompts to let the student process how it fits this particular situation, because next time it will be different
Once the active learning is done the refinement doesn’t stop
We have the coach available when we get stuck on the next piece of content
We’re also going to lean on that peer network
Not only those in your subject area, also outside so you get different ideas that may be able to be adapted to your area
For evaluation we lean on that peer group
Since we are creating question types to model the real world areas, we will use those questions in an exam that our peers will take and evaluate
Every teacher needs to interact with the same world we are asking the students to
When our assessments are using a tool such as Examsoft, the teachers need to use that same tool to see through the students eyes
Once we’ve gone through this refining and evaluation process with our peers to the point we are happy, then we are ready to start the testing phase with the students
If we are going to offer real world scenarios to our students using the charts and information they would have on an exam, why would we not use the same real world approach for our Professional Development
Let’s start to use the same tools our students are using, and learn in the same way our students need to be taught