Clinical Competence of Nurses in Mechanical Ventilation; Design and validation of Objective Structured Clinical Examination

Clinical evaluation is one of the main components in the discussion of clinical education in the field of nursing. Based on Miller's Pyramid in Education, objective structured clinical examination becomes one of the applied assessment methods to evaluate clinical skills. One of the clinical skills of nurses, especially in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), is mechanical ventilation. This study was conducted with the aim of designing an objective structured clinical examination to evaluate the competence of nurses in mechanical ventilation.

This descriptive study was conducted in 1401 in Tehran, Iran. According to the educational content of basic mechanical ventilation principles and the purpose of the study, six stations were determined and a specialized checklist was designed accordingly for each station. Checking the validity of the content of the designed checklists was done using the opinions of experts in both qualitative and quantitative ways.

Finally, the number of six stations with 31 items with titles; Tubing connection and initial preparation of the ventilator, initial and basic settings of the ventilator, check and intervention in the oxygenation status, check and intervention in the ventilation status, management of clinical challenges and management of alarms were finalized. Scoring ranged between 1 and 5, and the sum of the scores of the stations would indicate the nurse's clinical competence in mechanical ventilation.

According to the results of the present study, the use of an objective structured clinical examination designed to evaluate the clinical competence of nurses in basic mechanical ventilation is suggested.