Digital Skills Passport

This project evaluates an innovative teaching approach that aims to equip nursing students with the knowledge and skills required for the rapidly evolving digital healthcare landscape. 

Through a digital passport (‘University of Salford DiSK Pass’), nursing students will undertake digital activities embedded within the curriculum throughout their three-year (BSc) or two-year (MA) pre-registration nursing programme. The University of Salford DiSK Pass has been designed to meet the Nursing & Midwifery Council’s (NMC) latest Future Nurse Standards for Proficiency (NMC, 2018) as well as Health Education England’s (HEE) Digital Capabilities Framework (HEE, 2018). It featured as a major strategic thread within our Future Nurse Curriculum, which received approval from the NMC starting September 2019.  

 The impact of DiSK Pass will be examined by using a longitudinal study design with pre-registration nursing students in both BSc and MA Nursing programmes. Surveys, focus groups and secondary data will be used to understand at a granular level, students’ development across six domains (HEE, 2018).  

 A secondary aim is to explore educators’ digital capabilities and needs to successfully deliver and support students throughout their learning process.  

Proposed plan 

Objective 1 – Pilot and evaluate the DISk Pass App impact on student engagement, experience and capabilities developed   

Objective 2 – A longitudinal analysis to capture, measure and monitor digital skill use to improve professional development and practice amongst student nurses  

Objective 3 – A mixed methods; convergent parallel design study to explore educators’ digital capabilities and needs to successfully deliver and support students throughout their learning process  

Project Team:  PI (Cristina Vasilica) CoI (Matthew Wynn, Kyle Charnley, Dilla Davis, Neil Withnell, Lisa Ga) 

Research Group: Centre for Social and Health Research, Knowledge Health and Place & Connected Lives, Diverse Realities