Iran Journal of Nursing

  Background and Aim: Clinical education is fundamental to nursing science. One of the most important domains in clinical education is clinical evaluation. Today, new methods in evaluation such as ”BARS” can measure expected behaviors in specific job better than old methods, because of their structure that focus on specific behaviors of job. So, they may be effective for quality improvement in clinical teaching. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of implementing “BARS” method on student nurses’ managerial skills in nursing management practicum .

  Materials and Methods: This was a quasi-experimental study. All students (n=60) was randomly assigned to either experimental or control group. At first, the students in control group were trained and evaluated by their instructors. The next semester, the same instructors applied “BARS” method for experimental group. This method works based on critical events or special behaviors in nursing management practicum. At the end of practicum, students’ managerial skills in two groups were measured by checklist. The data were analyzed by SPSS .

  Results: The findings showed that managerial skills was significantly different between experimental ( =113.41) and control ( =83.83) group (P=0.005). Therefore, implementing “BARS” evaluation method is effective on improving managerial skills of nursing students.

  Conclusion: “BARS” as an evaluation method could evaluate specific and expected behaviors of student nurses in management practicum better than the old ones. Also, it could improve the quality of clinical teaching.