Teaching Family Nursing Through Simulation: Family-Care Rubric Development

• Use of simulation to teach caring and family nursing is limited.
• Research suggests that nurses lack confidence and competence in family care.
• Nursing education fails to fully address family nursing practices.
• Health care leaders are beginning to understand importance of family-focused care.
• Rubric shows promise in teaching approaches to advance family nursing practice.

BackgroundVan Gelderen Family-Care Rubric (VGFCR) was constructed to enhance learning experiences and offer consistent feedback during simulations.MethodInstrument development and psychometric testing followed a three-phase design: (a) literature review, (b) refinement of family constructs, and (c) psychometric testing of the VGFCR.ResultsAll constructs exhibited significance at the p = .05 level. VGFCR was determined to be reliable with an overall intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.928 (0.902-0.948) with a significance of p = .000 at the 95% confidence interval and Cronbach's alpha = 0.956 among three family nurse researchers.ConclusionsFuture research recommendations include utilizing the rubric with practicing nurses to discern the transferability to clinical practice.