Evaluating the use of social media to conduct clinical performance reviews of advanced practice nursing students

Abstract

Although nurse leaders have argued for years that faculty clinical observations of students should be direct, the feasibility of this in online nursing programs is a challenge.  As such, one would expect that the development of technology-based methods which permit direct evaluation of students in real time from a distance should be well underway.  If so, little has been done to investigate the impact of methods utilizing social media strategies to evaluate clinical work of Advanced Practice Registered Nurse students.  The purpose of this quality improvement project was to evaluate advanced practice nursing student and clinical preceptor perceptions of the feasibility and benefit of a real time student clinical performance review utilizing social media strategies which incorporated live audio and video feed.  The quantitative data supports the use of synchronous evaluation and lends support to the need and viability for a real-time evaluation of students which is perceived as beneficial and feasible to preceptor, student, and faculty.