I have a personal vision I created when I became a member of the School of Nursing (SON) faculty a few years back...that I was going focus my energies and abilities on making Clemson SON graduates the most sought after new hires in the Upstate. I share this after reading Ed’s blog about measuring output.
We, the SON, produce graduates. We get involved with a lot of other stuff, but in the end our main product is graduates. Most are at the BS level, others are at the MS or PhD level. I am therefore measuring my success as a faculty member directly to the reputation our graduates garner in the workplace. NCLEX pass rates are one measure (our pass rate is the highest it’s been in years :). Hire rates after graduation is another. But there are the less easily measured outcomes...for instance, how do hospital staff perceive the preparation of our grads over that of other schools? Are they as well prepared? What are the 5 and 10 year career trajectories of our grads compared to those of neighboring schools (I see an interesting longitudinal study in that)? These are findings I would like to unearth. They are all possible measures of my vision.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Catherine –
ReplyDeleteI have some experience measuring training output in a previous life. Measuring hospital staff perceptions is a good way to measure your program’s ability to satisfy hospital needs. Not knowing how you train nurses (generalists vs. specific types of nurses [OB, floor, ER, etc.] if that makes sense), it comes to mind that you may need a different type of survey depending what department nursing graduates work in a hospital. One other group we surveyed was the graduates themselves. Did they believe they were ready to take on the rigors of nursing career upon graduation? This may also help tailor your program. This survey could be administered a year after graduation and maybe again at another point. My sense is evaluating the products of your program as well as the receivers of your program would lead to a good analysis of how well you are meeting the needs of both groups.
Ed
We do survey our graduates and get good feedback from that. And we do prepare generalists as well as specialties (OB, Peds, Psych). The issue I continuously face is the nursing community at large thinking that BS students are not as capable skills wise upon graduation as their ADN counterparts. The majority of nurses are ADN prepared so is there an element of envy clouding their opinion.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to compare ADN and BS entry level nurses on skills and critical thninking abilities and see if they are different end products.