Exploring mentors’ interpretation of terminology and levels of competence when assessing nursing students: an integrative review

Objectives: The purpose of this integrative review is to evaluate the empirical and theoretical literature on the challenges mentors face in interpreting and assessing levels of competence of student nurses in clinical practice. Design: An integrative review of the literature. Data sources: An extensive and systematic literature search was conducted covering the period 1986-September 2016 across twelve databases covering health and education related publications. Grey literature was searched from wide relevant sources. Review methods: Sources were eligible for review when they referred to mentor’s interpretation or assessment of student nurses’ level of competence in practice settings. Methodological rigor of the included studies was evaluated with the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool. Results: After screening 1951records by titles, abstracts and full text, 8 were selected for review. The methodological quality of the studies was moderate. The studies reported: • Difficulties in the language used to describe competencies. • The challenge of distinguishing between different levels of competence. • Lack of clear and constructive feedback to students. Accurate and fair assessment of students is impeded by a lack of transparent and explicit criteria. Conclusions: There is a need to establish a transparent and common language to distinguish between and facilitate interpretation of different levels of competence. Well-designed rubrics might offer the solution to the challenges faced in practice-based assessment and necessitates further research into their use.