Essential Prelicensure Psychomotor Nursing Skills: A Delphi Study

Background: Standards for competency-based nursing education should clearly define the psychomotor skills expected of entry-level RNs. Feedback from academic and clinical nursing experts was crucial to identify the skills to be taught and evaluated. Method: A modified Delphi method was employed using nonprobability, snowball sampling. Educators from academic and clinical settings were recruited. Participants were asked to rate each psychomotor skill as essential or not essential to establish consensus on the skills to teach, the preferred instructional strategies, and need for evaluation of competence of the skills meeting consensus. Results: Findings provide consensus from academic and clinical nursing experts on the essential psychomotor skills, and the associated instructional strategies and psychomotor skills requiring evaluations to ensure competence and ensure nursing workforce readiness. Conclusion: This study offers guidance for nursing educators on the psychomotor skills to teach and assess to prepare generalist nurses to enter the workforce across any health care setting.