The educational effect of the Situational Leadership theory on physical assessment training

Abstract

A technical training seminar was held for pharmacists to acquire the skills and self-confidence to conduct physical assessments appropriately on patients. For the seminar, we developed an educational curriculum by adopting the Simulation Leadership (SL) theory. The educational effects of cardiac, respiratory, and intestinal sounds, edema, and light reflex were examined. After explaining each assessment and providing technical training, we evaluated the participants’ technical skills using the physical assessment simulator Physiko and conducted a self-evaluating questionnaire. As the results indicated an insufficient educational effect of training to acquire skills and self-confidence to assess cardiac sounds appropriately, we judged that the improvement of the curriculum using educational psychology was necessary. Specifically, we considered that the introductory lecture on the cardiac sounds and heart diseases before the technical training will be effective to improve the skills. With regards to the acquisition of self-confidence in physical assessment, we considered that a self-evaluation of skill accuracy will be effective. As for the educational effect of acquiring edema assessment skills, it was suggested that some of the statements made by the trainer during training confused the participants. Participants’ skills to assess respiratory and intestinal sounds and light reflex reached target levels, but their self-confidence in these assessments did not, possibly due to insufficient self-recognition of their skills. These results indicated that the evaluation of the education effect was important to detect the deficiency of the curriculum.