Asssessment of practice in intensive care: students' perceptions of a clinical competence assessment tool

Part I of this paper (literature review) identified some of the challenges around the development of suitable assessment tools to measure clinical competence. The lack of research on competence assessment, especially within an intensive care environment was also high lighted. In this, part 2, findings from a qualitative study aimed at exploring student nurses' perceptions of a new clinical competence assessment tool, recently introduced into a postgraduate intensive care nursing course are presented. Semi- structured interviews and a focus group interview were used to collect the data. Eleven students were involved in the study. The findings are presented in narrative form and in the context of literature on assessment and competence. Although the clinical competence assessment tool was in its infancy at the time of this study, the findings suggest that students not only had difficulty interpreting the language of the tool, but considered that because of its generic nature, it failed to capture the specialist skills required for intensive care nursing.