Effects of Using a Critically ILL Patients Assessment from According to FANCAS Concept in Nursing Practicum Course

Abstract

Assessing critically ill patients with FANCAS is used in the nursing practicum course. The evaluation form is useful for sequencing patients’ health problems and covering life-threatening issues. This descriptive research was aimed to evaluate the levels of knowledge and ability, opinions, and satisfaction among third-year nursing students and nursing instructors towards the critically ILL patients assessment form. The Fancas assessment framework by June C. Abbey  (1979) served as the conceptual framework for this research. This research was conducted with 146 junior-year nursing students and  8 nursing instructors selected by the purposive sampling method between June and July 2019. Data were collected using a five-rating scale questionnaire comprising three parts: 1) knowledge and ability of nursing students to used the critical patient assessment form; 2) opinions of nursing students to use of critical assessment forms; and 3) satisfaction of nursing students to using the critical patient assessment form. The whole instrument was tested for content validity by three experts and the content validity index was 0.92. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient reliability was 0.87. Data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, Chi-square, and test for statistical differences (ANOVA).

The research findings were as follows:

1.  Nursing students had a moderate level of the knowledge and ability to use the Critical Care Assessment Form ( = 3.38, SD = .74). In addition, the evaluation by nursing instructors found that the ability of nursing students was moderate level ( = 3.06, SD = .55).
2. The opinions of nursing students and nursing instructors about using the Critical Patient Assessment Form constructed the Fancas model were high level, ( = 3.96, S.D = .68) and ( = 4.19, S.D = .71), respectively.
3. Nursing students’ satisfaction was high while using the Critical Care Assessment constructed form, the Fancas model (= 3.83, SD = .69). Also, nursing instructors had a high level of satisfaction with the use of the crisis assessment constructed form ( = 4.61, S.D = .51).
4. There were no statistical differences in knowledge, ability, comments and satisfaction of nursing students and the result of competency evaluation of students by nursing instructors.

Preparing nursing students for clinical practices and developing confidence is important for nursing education. Therefore, the results of this research could be offered to enhance nursing students’ training program in Simulation Base Learning.