ABC’s: A reality based pedagogy for clinical nursing evaluation

Background: Current barriers to effective student evaluations in the clinical area are numerous and growing and new pedagogies need to be developed. We developed an educational pedagogy to aid in critical thinking for graduate and undergraduate nursing students in clinical areas that can replace or augment written care plans. Methods: Evaluate the effectiveness of the new ABC’s pedagogy (A=Anatomy/physiology, B=Best care, C=Complications, D=Drugs, E=Evidence based practice) for clinical teaching, using a 5 point Likert scale, for both graduate and undergraduate students and faculty through course evaluations. Results: Total undergraduate students (N = 37) evaluated the ABC’s pedagogy as follows; 98% rated as excellent and 2% very good. For graduate students (N= 8) 88% rated the ABC’s as excellent and 12% very good. Staff nurses and advanced practice nurse preceptors (N =17) rated the pedagogy as 88% excellent, 6% very good, and 6% neither good nor bad. Conclusions: The use of the ABC’s pedagogy in clinical care is a way to evaluate undergraduate and graduate students’ critical thinking, and to facilitate learning during practicum. It offers a systematic approach to replace written care plans includes the major benefit of real-time questions/answers between the professor/preceptor and students and incorporates evidence-based practice into individualized patient care. The ABC’s are one way to better prepare nursing students in areas of communication, critical thinking, providing care in clinical experiences, discussion of ethical and professional issues, as well as affording one-on-one time with the clinical preceptor/professor and promoting exponential learning in a preand post-conference environment.