Developing an Assessment Tool to Measure
Interdisciplinary Clinical Behaviors

The purpose of the Professional Learning Community (PLC) is to design an assessment tool that can evaluate the clinical behaviors and critical thinking skills of an interdisciplinary health care team within the safe environment of a simulated hospital maternity unit. A partnership between expert nursing faculty, hospital clinicians, and a physician of obstetrics and gynecology will develop a simulated high risk mother/baby case scenario. The partners will evaluate clinical behaviors of nursing students, licensed RNs, and medical students during the simulation scenario using the newly designed assessment tool.

The learning goals of the project are to:

• develop a high risk mother/baby clinical scenario within the safe environment of a simulation laboratory in order to assess the clinical behaviors and critical thinking skills of members from all three educational programs
• employ a creative approach to clinical practice with use of a responsive human simulator
• develop an assessment tool that addresses not only the theoretical knowledge of the healthcare practitioner, but also the communication, thinking, and psychomotor skills required in the complex care of the mother/baby dyad.

There will be opportunities for hospital staff to participate in presentations at the American Hospital Association, both statewide and nationally. Nursing faculty can plan to present at the Ohio Council for Associate Degree Nursing Educators and publish results in research-based journals. Medical school faculty can plan to present at the Ohio State Medical Association’s annual meeting. In addition, the community anticipates use of the simulation laboratory to incorporate interdisciplinary collaborative situation learning experiences throughout all areas of health care education.

Portraits of Practice will be available later in the year.

OLN Southeast Regional Center at Shawnee State University in Partnership with the Teaching and Learning Center 940 Second St., Portsmouth, OH 45662 (740) 351-3334