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Learning Objective 1: Describe major characteristics of an educational software to assess accuracy of nursing diagnoses
Learning Objective 2: Discuss factors related to diagnostic accuracy
Methods: This descriptive and exploratory study was approved by the ethics committee. The educational software was applied to 31 baccalaureate nursing students from two Brazilian Universities. This software is a tool used to assess the diagnostic accuracy of nursing students. Steps that the students are invited to go on the software are: (1) rating the level of relationship (evidence) between Defining Characteristics/ Risk Factors and Nursing Diagnoses; (2) reading a written clinical case; (3) rating the certainty of presence of Defining Characteristics/ Risk Factors in the clinical case; and (4) stating Nursing Diagnoses in the clinical case. Linguistic variables are used to determine levels of relationship and presence. Those variables are numerically interpreted in software. The software compares the student answer in each step with answers previously assigned by experts, and can generate a performance score of the students (0-100) for each step. The purpose of this study was analyzed if the performance of students in steps 1 or 3 may influence performance on diagnostic accuracy (step 4). Spearman test was used to analyze the correlation between the median scores of steps 1 and 3 to step 4.
Results: The median of students in step 1 was 75.7 (Q1: 72.1 - Q3: 81.8), in step 3 was 84.4 (Q1: 78.1 - Q3: 87.5) and in step 4 was 83.78 (Q1: 75.3 - Q3: 88.0). There was no significant correlation between steps 1 and 4 (p=0,961) and between steps 3 and 4 (p=0,218).
Conclusion: The accuracy of the student in rating the level of relationship between Defining Characteristics/ Risk Factors and Nursing Diagnoses or in identifying the presence of Defining Characteristics/ Risk Factors for a nursing diagnosis in a clinical case are not correlated with diagnostic accuracy.