Competency-Based Graduate Nursing Education for Fundoscopic and Otoscopic Exam Using Telehealth

Mastery of physical assessment skills is critical for assessing and diagnosing patients and is an important learning objective for graduate nursing programs. Standard equipment makes assessment of these skills difficult. A quasi-experimental pre/post single cohort design was used for this project. A telehealth cart adapted with an otoscope and a PanOptic™ ophthalmoscope with a smartphone facilitated the acquisition of kinesthetic skill to perform an otoscopic and fundoscopic exam. Using Benner's novice-to-expert theory stages of competence, the combined values of perceived competent and proficient levels improved from 22 to 40 percent pre-instruction to 70 to 87 percent post-instruction for both techniques.