Practical Strategies for Nursing Education Program Evaluation

• Nursing education program evaluation is important to help ensure program quality and meet requirements of regulatory and accrediting agencies.
• Documentation of use of aggregated data for program decision making is critical.
• Both qualitative and quantitative data are useful for nursing education program evaluation.

Self-evaluation is required for institutions of higher learning and the nursing programs within them. The literature provides information on evaluation models and instruments, and descriptions of how specific nursing education programs are evaluated. However, there are few discussions in the nursing education literature of the practical aspects of nursing education program evaluation: how to get started, how to keep track of data, who to involve in data collection, and how to manage challenging criteria. This article discusses the importance of program evaluation in the academic setting and provides information on practical ways to organize the evaluation process and aggregate data, and strategies for gathering data from students, graduates, alumni, and employers of graduates.