Abstract
Background:
Clinical judgment skills, a key component of nursing competency, are difficult to accurately and consistently assess. To support evaluation of these skills using Lasater's (
2007
) clinical judgment rubric (LCJR), rater training resources were developed and evaluated.
Method:
A one-group pretest-posttest design evaluated the effect of developed resources on agreement between two novice raters (NRs) and resource developers. NR-CE had content expertise; NR-NNE had no nursing experience.
Results:
Pre-training, total scores showed poor agreement between novice and trained raters (ICC
absolute
(2,1) LCJR
total for NR-CE
= −.59; LCJR
total for NR-N
NE
= .24). Posttraining, agreement was higher (ICC
absolute
(2,1) LCJR
total NR-
CE
= .70; LCJR
total NR-N
NE
= .76). Dimension-level scoring showed more variability in reliability estimates.
Conclusion:
Training supported raters with and without content expertise in developing a shared mental model of CJS. Future work should replicate these findings with larger samples for more confidence in results and examine convergent validity by comparing ratings to external benchmarks.