Vol. 1, Issue 2, Part A (2019)

Clinical skills allow a nurse to monitor and care for their patients correctly so they get the best care and any problems are spotted early. By competent clinical skills the nurses providing care based on professional knowledge and skills includes the ability to collaborate with other healthcare professionals, develop intrapersonal relationships, educate and instruct, manage nursing care, ensure safety and quality of nursing and expand the capacity of nursing. Effective clinical evaluation or examination should be the first aim for all nursing faculties and clinical instructors. Objective Structured Clinical Examination is one form of objective evaluation method that includes both summative and formative evaluation components. Therefore the application of objective structured clinical evaluation in nursing students' clinical evaluation increases their competencies. Aim of the Study: compare between objective structured clinical examinations versus observational checklist in evaluation of nursing students' clinical skills. Methodology An evaluative-comparative research was conducted by adapting posttest only design was utilized. A convenience sample of fifty students from second year, Faculty of Nursing, Neelain University, Sudan, Tools; divided into two parts; first part includes Scio-demographic characters and student's clinical evaluation score by both methods and second part included the Opinion of Students regarding advantages of both clinical evaluation methods. Results: Mean of Student's Clinical Evaluation score by Objective Structured Clinical Examination was (25.42%), while by Observational Checklist was (19.72). The more than half participant students (60.0%) preferred Objective Structured Clinical Evaluation than traditional observational checklist in clinical evaluation. There was a statistical significance between the Student's Opinion regarding Clinical Evaluation by Objective Structured Clinical Evaluation and Observational checklist in many questions. Conclusion: The findings of the present study concluded that clinical evaluation by Objective Structured Clinical Examination or Evaluation more objective method of assessment than the traditional method. Recommendation: Based on the current research findings the researchers recommended that; Objective Structured Clinical Evaluation should be incorporated with other methods for evaluating undergraduate nursing students in all studying years.