Assessment of the Methods of Testing Clinical Competence of Nursing Students in Nigeria

The study assessed the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) and Traditional Practical Examination (TPE) methods of testing Nursing Students’ Clinical competence in Nigeria by examining the strengths and weaknesses of OSCE and TPE as perceived by Nurse Educators and Nursing Students in Osun State, Nigeria. Descriptive research design of the survey type was used in the study. The population of the study comprised Seven Hundred and Fifteen (715) Nursing Students and Seventy-Five (75) Nurse Educators in Private and Public Nursing Institutions in Osun State, Nigeria. A sample of Three Hundred and Eighteen (318) participants was used which consisted of Two Hundred and Eighty-Eight (288) Nursing Students and Thirty (30) Nurse Educators drawn from Public and Private Nursing Institutions in Osun State, Nigeria using a multi-stage sampling procedure. Two research instruments were used to collect data for the study which were: Questionnaire on Students’ Assessment (QSA) administered to the students, and Questionnaires on Teachers’ Assessment (QTA) administered to the Nurse Educators. Validity of the instruments was ensured using expert judgment while the reliability of the instruments was estimated using the Cronbach Alpha reliability method. The reliability coefficients of QSA and QTA were 0.87 and 0.84 respectively. Two Research questions were raised, and two hypotheses were formulated for the study. Frequency counts and percentages were used to answer the research questions while the hypotheses were tested using a student’s t-test at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study indicated that the students perceived that OSCE has more strengths than TPE while Nursing Educators were of the view that the two methods complement each other. Based on the findings of the study, it is concluded that each of the methods has its weaknesses and strengths, and therefore, it is recommended that the two methods should be jointly used in training and testing Nursing students’ clinical competence in Nigeria.