Efficacy of Direct Observation of Procedural Skills (DOPS) on Practical Learning of Nursing Students in Intense Care Unit

Clinical evaluation of students by the direct observation of procedural skills (DOPS) in the practical and real situations ensures their capabilities in facing and predicting the clinical situations in case of particular patient’s conditions. The present research is conducted to determine and compare the efficacy of DOPS with traditional methods in clinical skill learning of students working in intensive care unit (ICU).
This trial work was performed in 2016 in ICU of one training hospitals of Tehran on 15 nursing students who were in the middle of their internship course. The students were randomly divided into two control (25 members) and test (26 members) groups. The evaluation in the control group was conducted based on the traditional approach and for the test group (intervention group) was implemented with DOPS method, based on a reliability and validity confirmed checklist prepared by the author. The obtained data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, cosmograph-Smirnov, chi-square (χ2), and independent t statistics in SPSS16 software.
A significant difference was obtained between the final score of these test and control groups in terms of the studied parameters (Arterial Blood Gas, p=0.001, and central venous pressure, p = 0.004). The final scores were not statistically significant in terms of marital status and gender of the participants. However, the Pearson’s correlation coefficient indicated a positive meaningful (p Since using DOPS leads to an improved learning of students, it is recommended replacing the traditional evaluation methods with this method or, at least, implement this new approach as a supplementary method for student evaluation.