Assessing outcomes of community-based nursing education

Assessing community-based, community-focused nursing education outcomes is a continuing conversation about the teaching/learning process between faculty, students, and communities. No longer is the focus primarily on the content and competencies that nursing faculty members believe students need to master. Rather, this conversation is now expanded, and thus fundamentally changed, by its focus on the development of new relationships requisite to community-focused practice which is characterized by quality and competency. The authors explore the role and process of assessment in helping faculty and students identify and clarify competencies needed to practice community-focused, community-based nursing.