Development of Student Survey on Writing Nursing Care Plan: An exploratory sequential mixed-methods study

Area of Science:

• Nursing Education
• Healthcare Quality Assessment
• Educational Measurement

Background:

• Student challenges in writing nursing care plans (NCPs) highlight gaps between nursing education and practice.
• Understanding these challenges is crucial for developing targeted educational strategies.
• Innovative approaches are needed to improve NCP writing skills.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a new survey tool to measure the quality of nursing students' written nursing care plans (NCPs).
• To identify specific challenges faced by students in NCP development.
• To provide a reliable instrument for assessing NCP writing competency.

Main Methods:

• An exploratory sequential mixed-methods design was employed across three phases.
• Phase 1 involved qualitative semi-structured interviews (n=22) analyzed using the Colaizzi method.
• Phases 2 and 3 involved developing the Student Survey on Writing Nursing Care Plan (SSW-NCP) and quantitative cross-sectional survey (n=195) using descriptive statistics.

Main Results:

• Five key themes emerged regarding student challenges: data gathering, problem identification, goal formulation, intervention planning, and outcome recognition.
• The developed SSW-NCP tool was found to be valid and reliable.
• Nursing students achieved a 'very good' level of quality in writing NCPs based on the survey results.

Conclusions:

• Assessing the quality of student-written NCPs provides insights for enhancing patient care management competencies.
• The SSW-NCP tool offers valuable data for nurse educators and managers to improve care plan writing skills among students and registered nurses.
• This study contributes to bridging the gap between nursing education and clinical practice through improved assessment tools.