Using Objective Structured Clinical Examination as a Teaching Tool in a Hybrid Advanced Health Assessment Course

Background: Advanced health assessment is a required course in advanced practice RN (APRN) education, essential to providing the foundation for differential diagnosis (DD) skills and the ability to formulate a plan of care. Problem: Feedback from clinical preceptors revealed that our doctor of nursing practice (DNP) students struggled to make a DD. Approach: This educational quality improvement project collected data from 7 cohorts of DNP students in either the Family Nurse Practitioner or Adult Gerontology Nurse Practitioner program to evaluate their readiness for clinical practicums and to inform necessary curriculum revisions. Outcomes: Data revealed that students' ability to identify 3 DDs correctly during the summative health assessment objective structured clinical examination was inconsistent. Qualitative data revealed students lacked understanding on how to use results from the physical assessment to formulate a DD. Conclusion: The findings of this project corroborate those from the literature that suggest we should teach APRN students DD skills explicitly.

Automated summary

The project found inconsistencies and deficiencies in DNP students' ability to make a differential diagnosis, indicating the need to explicitly teach APRN students differential diagnosis skills.