The Level of Competence Among Graduating Nursing Students in the Dedicated Education Unit (DEU)

Introduction: In the traditional clinical nursing education model, the faculty brings a group of students to a clinical facility wherein the faculty assigns each student one patient and provides direct supervision as the students apply knowledge and skills learned in the classroom to the patient. To address these challenges and improve nursing education, a different clinical nursing educational model, called the Dedicated Education Unit (DEU) was developed. The DEU differs from traditional clinical education model in the strength of the academic–clinical partnership and the organization of clinical teaching roles. On the DEU, the role of the clinical faculty coordinator (faculty) is to coach the clinician instructors (staff nurses) in their new teaching role and ensure that students understand theoretical and conceptual concepts that guide their care. The staff nurses, not faculty, provide bedside clinical instruction to the students, each working with only one or two students throughout the entire rotation.
The study aimed to investigate the self-reported level of competence among graduating nursing students and compare the level of competence between the students in the DEU and the traditional clinical model.
Methods: This is a quantitative study using a pre-test/post-test design which was conducted among all graduating nursing students. The students completed the Casey-Fink Readiness for Practice Survey and the Nursing Anxiety and Self-Confidence with Clinical Decision Making Scale.
Results: 99 students completed the survey. For the Readiness for Practice pre test, the DEU students’ mean was 2.73 and for the traditional clinical students, the mean was 2.75. There was no statistically significant difference between the 2 groups (p=.84). For the post test, the DEU students’ mean was 3.0 and the traditional students’ mean was 2.8. There was a statistically significant difference between the DEU and traditional clinical students (p<.05), which showed that the DEU students were more prepared for practice.
Conclusion: The DEU is an approach to clinical education that can enhance graduating student nurses' preparedness to practice as professional nurses.