Evaluation of the Oregon Consortium of Nursing Education (OCNE) Curriculum

This chapter presents findings from a comprehensive evaluation of the Oregon Consortium of Nursing Education conducted from May 2008 through April 2011 funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). The evaluation included a description of processes that led to the successful development and operations of the consortium; the impact of OCNE on faculty and student experiences; the degree to which the OCNE met its goals of increasing the number of bachelors’ prepared nurses in the state and improving the quality of nursing education. The evaluation team developed two instruments to assess OCNE’s impact on quality of education, specifically students’ attainment of clinical competency, and an OCNE fidelity scale, designed to determine the extent to which each campus fully implemented the principles of OCNE, including teaching practices. It was assumed that variations in OCNE fidelity might relate to variations in learning outcomes. While there was variation in in the OCNE fidelity, there was no relationship to the learning outcomes. Results from each of these aspects of the evaluation are presented, as well as a discussion on the continuing development of instruments and their use in continuous quality improvement.