As healthcare education continues to evolve, making sure healthcare professionals are competent in the skills they need to provide quality patient care becomes increasingly crucial. To meet the demands of this continuous skill development, competency tracking has emerged as an up-and-coming standardized assessment modality that provides valuable insights into students’ clinical abilities.
In this blog post, we will explore the top four reasons why competency tracking is becoming an essential component for the future of healthcare education.
1. Enhancing Objectivity and Consistency
Competency tracking enables healthcare education institutions to establish standardized evaluation criteria for students. By utilizing predefined competencies and assessment rubrics, educators can evaluate students consistently across the program, eliminating bias and subjectivity. This approach ensures fair and objective assessments, leading to more accurate and reliable evaluations of student performance. (Source: 1)
2. Identifying Individual Learning Needs
Competency tracking promotes a comprehensive assessment of students’ clinical abilities. By tracking and measuring specific skills and competencies, educators gain valuable insights into each student’s strengths and areas for improvement. Identifying these learning needs early on allows institutions to tailor educational programs to address gaps, resulting in more competent and confident graduates.
3. Improving Patient Safety
Patient safety is paramount in healthcare, and competency tracking plays a crucial role in ensuring that students possess the necessary skills and knowledge to provide safe and effective patient care. In recent research a positive correlation has been found between nursing competence and patient safety scores. (Source: 2) By tracking and assessing competencies related to patient safety, institutions can graduate healthcare professionals who are capable of delivering high-quality care while minimizing the risk of medical errors.
4. Meeting Accreditation Requirements
Accreditation bodies and regulatory agencies increasingly emphasize the need for healthcare education institutions to demonstrate accountability and meet specific standards. Competency tracking provides concrete evidence of student progress and outcomes, allowing institutions to effectively meet accreditation requirements. By incorporating competency tracking, healthcare education programs can confidently showcase their commitment to producing highly competent healthcare professionals.
At Education Management Solutions (EMS), we are committed to providing powerful solutions that support healthcare providers in their competency tracking initiatives. Our comprehensive platform enables institutions to track and measure students’ progress effectively with advanced assessment tools and detailed reports and analytics that can identify individual learning gaps.
Additionally, our Competency platform provides robust reporting features that enable institutions to meet accreditation requirements and demonstrate program outcomes to all of their stakeholders.
Contact EMS today to learn more about how our Competency solution can help your institution implement enhanced learner progression tracking and drive better outcomes in your healthcare education program.
Sources:
- 17. Boateng BA, Bass LD, Blaszak RT, Farrar HC. The development of a competency-based assessment rubric to measure resident milestones J Grad Med Educ. 2009;1:45–8
- Zaitoun RA, Said NB, de Tantillo L. Clinical nurse competence and its effect on patient safety culture: a systematic review. BMC Nurs. 2023 May 19;22(1):173. doi: 10.1186/s12912-023-01305-w. PMID: 37208727; PMCID: PMC10196295.