The continued adoption of competency-based training is bringing immense benefits to nursing education, such as enhanced learner outcomes and improved workforce readiness, but many institutions face challenges navigating the transition to competency-based programs smoothly. One of the key concerns is the effective tracking and management of competencies, which is crucial to ensure programs meet accreditation requirements. Education Management Solutions (EMS), one of the leading providers of education and competency management solutions, understands these challenges and has developed a comprehensive and user-friendly competency management solution to empower healthcare educators. This HealthySimulation.com article will discuss the benefits EMS offers in tracking competencies for nursing education.
Join us for today’s open-access CE Webinar at 10AM PT/1PM ET:
Emerging Technologies to Manage Clinical Learner Competencies
Four Ways Competency-Based Education is Transforming Nursing Education
The Education Management Solutions Competency platform empowers educators to customize competency frameworks, track learner progression, manage clinical training, and meet accreditation standards seamlessly. With features such as competency tracking, curriculum mapping, and a learner tracking system, Competency is designed to effectively support competency-based curriculum delivery and facilitate competency-based education (CBE). Here are four ways CBE transforms the way nurses are educated:
1. Improves Clinical Judgment and Patient Outcomes: Rather than progression through a program based on credit hours or time spent in class, learners progress based on their ability to demonstrate proficiency in specific competencies. Competency-based education shifts education from rote memorization work to mastery of standardized skills and entrust-able professional activities (EPAs) to demonstrate safe nursing practices. This change yields nursing graduates who are better equipped to immediately face the challenges of an increasingly complex healthcare system.
2. Fosters Greater Communication and Collaboration: Several established studies definitively link interprofessional collaboration and communication with better patient and provider outcomes. With an increased focus on mastery of competencies, CBE fosters a more collaborative interprofessional learning environment across learning disciplines and healthcare professions. This freer exchange of ideas prepares individuals to not only excel in their respective roles, but also equips them to thrive in healthcare settings through improved communication and collaboration skills. When healthcare professionals understand each other’s strengths and how to combine them effectively, the result is a more coordinated, efficient, and patient-centered care delivery system.
3. Requires Greater Use of Simulation in Education: Competency-based education is dynamic and shifts with the needs of learners. However, this can create more difficulty for the educator to make arrangements to add clinical hours to allow the learner more experience in a particular clinical area on short notice is easier said than done, if not outright impossible. Healthcare simulation offers a solution to this hurdle. Simulation allows learners to make mistakes and learn from them via a safe, controlled environment and detailed debrief sessions and allows the educator to individualize the simulation experience to address the gap in learning.
4. Transforms the Role of Nurse Educators: The shift to competency-based education is undoubtedly a change for learners whose past experiences were largely focused on specific time periods and rigid curricula. Educators should anticipate an adjustment period for learners as they may need help settling into a new learning model that can initially feel unstructured and unfamiliar.
To help in this adjustment, educators need to stay focused on the cornerstone of competency-based learning – personalized feedback. Quality feedback allows learners to understand where they are in their competency development, assess what gaps they need to address and determine how to improve their performance. As learners progress, so does their confidence to perform as capable, competent nurses. This translates to a learning experience that is more supportive, responsive, and tailored to student’s needs and is immensely fulfilling for nurse educators.
Key Principles of Competency-Based Education
Measurable learning outcomes, skill mastery, personalized learning pathways, meaningful assessments, and feedback and reflection are the key tenets of any successful competency-based education program. CBE provides learners and educators with clear and measurable objectives to be reached, taking the subjectivity of educators partially out of the equation. To grow the personalized journey of each learner, CBE allows the learner to master a skill prior to scaffolding to a higher level of learning. Through assessment, learners can demonstrate and showcase their abilities and understanding of key concepts. After the evaluation, educators can give feedback to provide the learner with an outside perspective for reflection. This reflection process enables the learner to identify areas for improvement and continuous skill enhancement.
Education Management Solutions’ Competency Solution
Education Management Solutions’ Competency provides educators with a unique and effective solution that aligns target outcomes across an entire curriculum. With a centralized and secure cloud-based framework, Competency allows administrators to linearly map course objectives, assessment protocols, program outcomes, and accreditation requirements. Additionally, advanced data reporting and analytic features enable educators to track learner performance across curricula. Competency also supports integrated gap analysis tools, making it possible to spot curriculum gaps, identify at-risk learners early on, and ensure students are ready for real-world challenges at graduation. Competency’s innovative technology has enabled educators at institutions like Thomas Jefferson University Sidney Kimmel School of Medicine to more effectively train the next generation of practitioners.
Competency Allows healthcare education institutions to:
Simplify Curriculum Development: Automate curriculum mapping to competency-based parameters, perform comprehensive gap analysis, and enhance holistic program assessment.
Manage Rotations, Preceptors, and Sites: Access a central digital data repository, skills checklists, scheduling, site management, patient encounters, and assessment tracking.
Track learner Progress Longitudinally: Consolidate multisource data, map competency-based progressions, and track EPAs to meet accreditation requirements, and train skilled practitioners.
Obtain Deliverable Data for Accreditors: Centrally track, analyze, and export competency-based deliverable data and easily share with accreditors to keep programs compliant with the most current clinical evaluation mandates.
Five Effective Strategies for Teaching Competencies In Healthcare Education
Healthcare instructors can effectively implement competency-based learning by integrating a mix of interactive and practical teaching methods tailored to developing specific skills and knowledge areas. Here are five ways instructors can teach competencies:
- Problem-Based Learning (PBL): Engage learners with real-world problems that require them to apply their knowledge to develop viable solutions collaboratively. This method encourages critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
- Case-Based Learning: Utilize detailed case studies that reflect actual patient scenarios. Instructors can guide discussions and decision-making processes, helping learners connect theoretical knowledge with clinical reasoning and patient care.
- Clinical Simulation: Implement state-of-the-art simulations using manikins and patient simulators to mimic clinical situations. This hands-on approach allows learners to practice and hone their skills in a controlled but realistic environment.
- Real Patient Interactions: Provide structured clinical experiences where learners interact with patients under close supervision. This direct exposure is crucial for developing patient communication, assessment, and management competencies.
- Continuous Skill Development: Provide instructors with ongoing opportunities to enhance their teaching skills. This can include professional development through workshops, webinars, and conferences focused on the latest educational strategies and technologies.
View the LEARN CE/CME Platform Webinar Training in Motion: A Next-Gen Solution for Mobile Simulation to learn more!
More About Education Management Solutions (EMS)
Education Management Solutions (EMS) is a pioneering leader in simulation, competency assessment, and mobile trainingsolutions, partnering with higher education, healthcare systems, and government institutions to optimize healthcare training through premium simulation management solutions.
For more than 30 years, EMS has provided partners with turnkey solutions to host, deliver, track, and measure learner performance and analyze core competencies. Through our three core solutions of Enterprise, Competency, and Training in Motion®, we supply the service and technology to deliver comprehensive simulation management, simplified curriculum assessment and student performance tracking, and high-end mobile simulation training.
Fusing performance observations and measurements across immersive reality, hands-on education, and classroom instruction; Education Management Solutions provides a comprehensive learning backbone that elevates the discipline of healthcare anytime, anywhere.
