Abstract
Purpose: In community health nursing practicums, learning is assessed based on students’ performance. This study aims to clarify how teachers assess students’ learning outcomes of community health needs assessment in practicums and to elucidate the criteria of performance evaluation of learning community health needs assessment.
Method: The research participants were 12 community health nursing faculties directly instructing in practicums at a nursing university, comprising three lecturers, eight associate professors and one professor. The author carried out interviews by asking the teachers to recall teaching situations in community health nursing training exercises and to relay the educational intervention situation and the reactions to the learning as grasped by the teachers. The author used the narratives obtained in the interviews to interpret/describe learning outcomes that the teachers had expected of students, and compared these to the community nursing process and four aspects of assessing learning.
Results: The teachers’ assessments of students’ performances: thinking, e. g. “extracting significant information and interpreting”; and “empathetic understanding of the community and their life”, skills, e. g. “communicating with informants”; understanding, e. g. “increased understanding of theory and concepts of community/public health nursing”; and attitude, e. g. “commitment to public health nursing practices”.
Conclusion: The evaluation criteria of community health needs assessment learning outcomes are the ability to extract significant information and create connection, empathic understanding of the community and their lives, communication, and internalization of theory and concepts of community / public health nursing.
