NURS 6370 Week 11 skills self-assessment example

Eight Skills, Two Columns: A Self-Assessment of Educator Skills in a University Program and on a Hospital Unit

Student Name

College of Nursing, Walden University

NURS 6370: Foundational Skills for Nurse Educators in Academic and Healthcare Environments

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Eight Skills, Two Columns: A Self-Assessment of Educator Skills in a University Program and on a Hospital Unit

This self-assessment rates eight working skills an educator uses, and it rates each one twice: once for my Monday role as a clinical instructor in a university's junior medical-surgical course, and once for my role as the educator for a hematology and oncology unit. The scale runs from 1 (never attempted) to 4 (done repeatedly and reviewed by someone else). A rating needs a task I have attempted or have not; a feeling of confidence does not count. The professional development standards and the academic educator competencies describe many of the same skills in different language (Harper & Maloney, 2022; Halstead, 2019), and the point of the grid is to see where the same skill is held differently in the two places.

The Grid

Table 1

Self-Ratings by Skill and Setting

Six of the eight skills are rated differently in the two columns. Only objective writing and session planning come back the same, and both were practiced in each setting during this term.

Why Four of the Ratings Differ

Skill 3, writing rules. In the program, I wrote the late work, attendance and integrity policies for a sophomore laboratory in Week 3, and my course coordinator reviewed and adopted them, so that column is a 3. On the unit I have never written a policy. The closest task was the checklist instructions in Week 7, which set a rule about critical items, but unit rules belong to the practice council and I have only taught them. That column is a 2, and it is generous.

Skill 6, spoken feedback. With students, I have told a learner face to face that a care plan would not pass and why, many times, with a faculty lead reviewing my clinical evaluations. On the unit I have written feedback, but I have never told a nurse who has worked there longer than I have, to their face, that their practice was unsafe. When the Week 5 audit showed gowns being skipped, I solved it with a supply change and a huddle, which was the right answer to that problem but also let me avoid a single difficult conversation. That column is a 1.

Skill 4, competency tools. The unit column is a 3 because the Week 7 spill checklist has now been used with eleven residents by two observers, and we compared results. The program column is a 2: the university gives me its clinical evaluation tool, and I have used it but never built or revised one, which the evaluation literature treats as a separate skill from applying an instrument (Billings & Halstead, 2020).

Skill 8, documentation. The unit column is a 3 because the Week 10 record for the gown in-service was built to survive an audit, with attendance against a denominator and competence kept separate from attendance. In the program, the equivalent is documenting a student's progress on the clinical evaluation, and I have only ever done it at midterm and final, never at the moment a concern first appeared. That is a 2.

The Two Skills I Will Build First

First, spoken feedback on the unit (Skill 6, hospital column). It is the lowest number on the grid, and it is the one that matters most for patient safety, because written feedback reaches a nurse after the shift while spoken feedback can stop an unsafe step during it. I will ask our clinical nurse specialist to observe me giving feedback to a senior nurse after a hazardous drug audit and to debrief it with me.

Second, deciding whether a problem is a knowledge gap in the program (Skill 7, university column). On the unit, the gown audit taught me to look at supplies, workload and habits before assuming that nurses did not know the standard. With students I still assume the opposite: a missed step means more teaching. Next term I will test that assumption with my clinical group by asking, before reteaching anything, whether the student could have done it correctly if the conditions had been different.

Neither of the two skills I have chosen is the one I am best at, and neither can be improved by reading. Both require doing the uncomfortable version of the task with someone watching.

References

Billings, D. M., & Halstead, J. A. (2020). Teaching in nursing: A guide for faculty (6th ed.). Elsevier.

Halstead, J. A. (Ed.). (2019). NLN core competencies for nurse educators: A decade of influence. National League for Nursing.

Harper, M. G., & Maloney, P. (Eds.). (2022). Nursing professional development: Scope and standards of practice (4th ed.). Association for Nursing Professional Development.