The Impact of Rusnani Concept Mapping (RCM) on Academic Achievement and Clinical Practices among Diploma Nursing Students

Introduction: In Malaysian nursing education, concept mapping is not widely practiced among nurse educators and students. Therefore, the researcher aims to develop and evaluate the impact of the Rusnani Concept Mapping (RCM) protocol on academic achievement and clinical practices among diploma nursing students. RCM is one of the teaching learning methods that specifies guidelines for nurse educators to harmonise classroom and clinical setting methods. Method: RCM is a concept mapping protocol guideline developed by the researcher and is validated with content and face validity and the Delphi technique. The study design is quasi-experimental with two groups. The experimental and control groups received education using RCM and the lecture method, respectively. Data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics using paired t-tests. P values less than 0.05 were interpreted as significant. Results: In the pre-test, the students taught using RCM had a mean achievement score of 11.23 with and SD = 2.59, while at post-test, the mean achievement score was 13.19 with and SD = 1.71 and a mean gain score of 1.96. In contrast, students taught using lecture method had a mean achievement score of 10.71 and SD = 2.23 in the pre-test and a mean score of 12.60, SD = 1.64 in post-test achievement with a mean gain score of 1.89. The post-test scores of the experimental and control group were significantly different (t = 2.53, p 0.05). The mean concept mapping care plan score was 59.33 and 65.23, respectively, for the control group and experimental group. The paired t-test revealed that there was a significant difference between experimental and control groups, p value 0.05. The result of students’ perceptions regarding concept mapping in the experimental group showed as positive moderate with a mean score of 3.44. Conclusion: This study provides additional evidence that RCM is instructionally valuable as a learning method and is an active learning strategy for meaningful learning and motivating superior achievement in students.