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The purpose of this article is to provide a preliminary report of the process that was undertaken by the faculty teaching in the undergraduate program of a school of nursing to develop a Clinical Performance Evaluation Tool (CPET). The CPET is intended to accurately measure the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) competencies. First, a background on the QSEN competencies is provided. Then, the impetus for change, description of the clinical education model, and the processes used in developing the tool are discussed. Finally, the proposed new tool and its implementation is described. Using data from pilot evaluation of the tool as adapted to diverse clinical settings, preliminary results are presented along with potential venues for expanded use of this instrument.
QSEN Background
QSEN (2007 ) is a project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, developed by Dr. Linda Cronenwett (principal investigator) and fellow academicians, researchers, and representatives of stakeholder professional organizations as team members. The goals of this project were to "describe competencies that would apply to all registered nurses" (Cronenwett et al., 2007 , p. 124) and, ultimately, to reshape professional identity formation in nursing to include commitment to quality and safety competencies recommended by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) (Smith, Cronenwett, & Sherwood, 2007 ).
The QSEN project occurred in phases, with Phase 1 resulting in the identification of six primary competency areas with corresponding Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes (KSAs). These six areas are patient-centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, safety, and informatics. The definitions for these competencies and the corresponding KSAs can be found at the QSEN Web site (http://www.qsen.org/competency_definitions.php).
Educators recognized that the incorporation of QSEN competencies into student program completion, as well as the performance of these competencies for new nursing graduates, played an important role in workforce proficiencies. Therefore, in Phase 2 of the QSEN project, several nursing programs were selected in a competitive process to develop new approaches to develop and evaluate the QSEN competencies in undergraduate nursing programs. QSEN deliberately selected a heterogeneous group of undergraduate programs to facilitate the generalizability of new approaches across the educational spectrum. The school of nursing that developed the CPET was selected as one of the Phase 2 programs.
QSEN: A Guide...