The effect of outcome-based education on clinical performance and perception of pediatric care of the third-year nursing students in Mongolia

Abstract

Background Mongolian government has set improvement of clinical proficiency of nursing students as one of its priorities. Nursing professionals have the sentinel role in providing healthcare services in rural areas. Outcome-based education (OBE) offers a promising pedagogical approach to actively mentally engage students to strengthen their clinical proficiencies. We implemented a pilot project with the objective of comparing students’ clinical performance under OBE with our traditional didactic techniques. Methods The researchers implemented a non-equivalent two-armed quasi-experimental post-test-only’ design approach study. The intervention arm (n = 34) received OBE pediatric training, while the control arm (n = 32) received the traditional pedagogical pediatric nursing training. Each arm of the study completed 16 hours of theory, 32 hours of clinical skills practice and 32 hours of seminars in pediatric nursing care. Data were collected using a five-section instrument, Demographic, Competency Inventory, Nursing Students’ Satisfaction, Course Experience, and Objective Structured Clinical Examination. Performance and knowledge proficiencies were evaluated by applying the two-sided independent T-test. The distributions of categorical variables were assessed by Fisher’s exact test or chi-squared test of significance. Results The intervention arm had higher mean score value in the competency inventory (X¯ = 238.70, SD = ± 23.07) compared to the control arm (X¯ = 222.11, SD = ± 39.94) (P = 0.04); similarly, the mean value for nursing students’ satisfaction was higher for the intervention arm (X¯ = 117.87, SD = ± 15.94) compared to the control group (X¯ = 109.76, SD = ± 16.94) (P = 0.049). Additionally, the difference in the mean value for course experience questionnaire between the intervention arm (X¯ = 125.33, SD = ± 19.30) and the control arm (X¯ = 110.41, SD = ± 11.28) was statistically significant (P = 0.0001). Finally, the intervention arm had a higher mean value (X¯ = 85.40, SD = ± 6.11) for objective structural clinical examination compared to the control arm (X¯ = 81.56, SD = ± 7.01) (P = 0.023). Conclusion OBE pedagogical approach offers promising benefits to improving nursing students’ clinical competencies; additionally, the OBE approach seems to increase students’ satisfactions with their clinical curriculum.