Assessment of clinical skills in laboratory settings in prelicensure health education programs: a scoping review...

This scoping review aims to map the available literature on the assessment of clinical skills in laboratory settings in health education prelicensure programs.

Prelicensure health programs are facing growing challenges in delivering learning experiences that sufficiently prepare students for safe practice as clinical settings contend with workforce shortages, rising workload demands, and increasingly complex patient populations. One safety component is the assessment of clinical skills prior to entering practice and caring for patients. Laboratory experiences generally include opportunities for hands-on practice and demonstration of a new clinical skill, such as medication administration or infection prevention and control measures. This scoping review is necessary as laboratory assessments play a crucial role in providing insights into students' readiness to perform relevant clinical skills prior to caring for patients in practice settings.

This review will consider qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods studies on approaches and strategies used by faculty, staff, and/or students when assessing clinical skills in laboratory settings in health education prelicensure programs. Assessment of postlicensure health care professionals' clinical skills will be excluded.

This review will follow the JBI methodology for scoping reviews. Databases to be searched will include CINAHL with Full Text (EBSCOhost), MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase (Embase.com), ERIC (EBSCOhost), ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest), and Google (with advanced search strategies). Two independent reviewers will screen citations for inclusion as well as conduct data extraction and analysis. A third reviewer will resolve any disagreements. Data will be presented in tables and charts, accompanied by a narrative summary.

OSF https://osf.io/yz5bu.