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An evaluation is a significant aspect of nursing practice because it helps in developing an important knowledge base to guide practice. Evaluation in nursing refers to the judgment of the efficiency of nursing care to achieve client goals. The client behavioral responses are compared with the set goals and outcome standards to arrive at the judgment. Individuals working in the field of nursing are assigned projects during their training program to help in evaluating their effectiveness in offering care to patients or producing the desired outcomes. Such evaluations are also applied when writing nursing capstone projects. In this article, tips on how to conduct a formative and summative evaluation for a nursing project are discussed. Formative Evaluation Formative evaluation refers to the methods employed to assess nurses and nursing students about knowledge and learning needs. Formative evaluation helps in identifying areas that the nurses and nursing students are struggling to understand and skills that they are yet to acquire so that adjustments on instructional techniques can be made. The main aim of the formative assessment is to collect feedback that can help the instructor to guide improvements in the continuing teaching and learning setting. A formative evaluation assesses the progress of an individual and provides feedback on the development of the skills, knowledge, and abilities without passing final judgment. The evaluation should be more than just a test on how one performs at a particular point. Instead, it should be an integral part of an individual's learning and grow as a nurse. There are three main ways of undertaking formative evaluation in nursing, which include involving multiple tools, involving multiple stakeholders, and considering the plan, monitoring, implementation, and progress. Involving multiple tools. Evaluation tools help the instructor to identify the strengths and weaknesses of student's skills, abilities, and knowledge. Use of multiple tools during the evaluation process helps the instructor to track the progress of individual nursing students over time. Additionally, involving multiple tools helps the instructor to report on the progress made by groups of students. Involving multiple stakeholders. Taking into account the concerns and priorities of various stakeholders help to guide communication strategies, evaluation planning during and after the assessment process. Involving multiple stakeholders also supports the use of evaluation findings. Involving stakeholders during the evaluation process helps in adding value by contributing to the framing of crucial evaluation questions. Consider plans, monitoring, implementation, and progress. A planning evaluation helps to assess and clarify whether the timeline and assessment goals are appropriate. A monitoring evaluation is concerned with providing the assurance that resources employed in the assessment process are spent appropriately. The main focus of an implementation evaluation is the extent to which the assessment process is progressing about the plan. The focus of the progress evaluation is to find out whether the set goals in the assessment process are met. Summative Evaluation A summative evaluation refers to an assessment method used to measure skills and knowledge acquisition at the end of a defined instructional period. In nursing education, summative evaluation is used to determine whether the learning objectives have been achieved about specific standards. The main aim of a summative evaluation is to assess the level of proficiency that has been achieved at the end of an instructional unit. Summative evaluation is undertaken at the end of the program cycle to examine the outcomes and determine the overall effectiveness. Summative evaluation can help in deciding specific services in nursing. The main ways of conducting summative analysis include performing content analysis and outcomes analysis. Performing content analysis. The main focus of content analysis in summative evaluation is accurateness, completeness, and the current state of the instructional resources used during the assessment process. Content analysis helps in determining whether the materials used in the evaluation process are convenient and satisfactory in realizing the set goals. Additionally, content analysis helps in determining whether materials are effective to the target learners in a given setting. Performing outcomes analysis. Performing outcome analysis helps to identify the impact of training on the nursing students. The outcome analysis helps the instructor to understand how well the students have grasped the information. Additionally, performing outcome analysis helps to measure changes in effectiveness and quality of work that the nursing students have accomplished after the training program. In nursing, an evaluation refers to the judgment of the efficiency of nursing care to realize client goals. Nurses and nursing students carry out projects during their training program, which are used to evaluate their effectiveness in offering care to patients or producing the desired outcomes. The main evaluation approaches used in nursing projects are a formative and summative evaluation. Formative evaluation refers to the methods of assessing nurses and nursing students about acquired knowledge, skills, and learning needs. A summative evaluation refers to an assessment technique used to measure skills and knowledge acquirement at the end of a defined instructional period. There are three main ways of undertaking formative evaluation in nursing, which include involving multiple tools, involving multiple stakeholders, and considering a plan, monitoring, implementation, and progress. The main ways of conducting summative analysis include performing content analysis and outcomes analysis. In case of any challenges while conducting an evaluation, it is advisable for nurses to liaise with professional analysts.
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