Collaboration readiness: Developing standards for interprofessional formative assessment

Graduate nursing education strives to promote collaborative practice on interprofessional teams. However, measuring collaboration during formative stages of professional development is rare. Few assessments are available to determine whether graduates of nursing education programs have met the required accreditation benchmarks. This project evaluates two performance standards for assessing collaboration during formative assessments.

Formative assessment of communication and collaboration skills was explored for 62 entry-level Master's students in nursing, using a team-based objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) involving two patient simulations and assessment checklists, and comparing normative (relative standard) and criterion-referenced (absolute standard) methods.

Mean percentages of behaviors using the normative approach indicated a range of performance levels for particular communication and collaboration behaviors. Criterion-referenced standards were higher than normative standards from actual student performance.

This method improves assessment of collaboration through OSCEs using normative and criterion-referenced standards. We recommend using both methods jointly when setting standards or qualifying scores.