Assessment of mental health nursing competence using level III academic marking criteria: the Eastbourne assessment of practice scale

The assessment of clinical competence in nursing represents a challenge to the profession. There is a need for assessment of practice skills through evaluative observation of performance but unfortunately such methods are not regurlarly used as a basis for assessment within most academic nursing institution. Instead there is still a reliance upon more traditional types of academic assessment usually done through a written medium. Such methods whilst academically rigorous do not easily assess actual real life competence. This paper will describe how this tension was addressed through the development of a tool that combines observation of real life practice and via style questioning with an assessment marking grid whose descriptors represent level III practice. Its inter rater reliability (rs=0.88, P<0.01) was established by 14 clinical nurse specialists in cognitive behaviour therapy who assessed a single video tape recording of a post-registration students performance whilst undergoing training in cognitive behaviour therapy.