Student Success Through Mastery Learning in a Nursing Health Assessment Course

A nurse's ability to assess a patient is foundational to practice. The educational theory of mastery learning can be applied to teach physical assessment in nursing to define standards, provide feedback, and encourage a baseline level of student competence required in the new American Association of Colleges of Nursing's Essentials.

A baccalaureate nursing health assessment course was redesigned in mastery learning to include detailed rubrics, faculty exemplar videos, and laboratory time for practice. Student-produced physical assessment videos served as formative assessments for each body system.

Six students did not reach the assigned mastery level on one of the formative assessments, allowing for quick identification and remediation. All of the students passed the end-of-course physical assessment examination, meeting the goal of the course redesign.

Mastery Learning Theory allowed all students to practice skills, receive feedback, and gain confidence to master physical assessment. [.