Abstract
Purpose: Preparing students to engage in team-based healthcare is a major focus of clinical nurse specialist (CNS) education programs. A robust evaluation plan is needed to monitor achievement of key outcomes in this complex undertaking.
Description: Informed by the work of Kirkpatrick and Stufflebeam, an evaluation model that incorporates multiple information sources about process and outcomes related to interprofessional (IP) education is proposed.
Outcome: Improvements in scores on attitude and competency measures suggest that the program had the desired effects on students' attitudes and self-efficacy for IP collaboration and was validated by faculty clinical observations of IP communication and teamwork. Moreover, students indicated at both graduation and at 1-year follow-up surveys that they were prepared to function on IP teams, providing further evidence that the clinical nurse specialist (CNS) program prepared them in this key area of nursing practice.
Conclusion: The evaluation plan guided the collection of quantitative and qualitative information that faculty could use to refine the CNS program. Congruent with the CNS role as change agents, future model refinements should incorporate systems change activities.