Title

Effect of a mental health nursing competency model: among Indian students

Authors

M. Baskaran^1,*, J. Kavitha², R. Jeyadeepa¹ & R. Rathi³

Affiliation

¹Lincoln University College, Malaysia and Department of Nursing Research, PSG College of Nursing, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India; ²Department of Child Health Nursing, PSG Institute of Medical Sciences and Research & PSG Allied Health Sciences, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India; ³Department of Medical Surgical Nursing, PSG College of Nursing, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India; *Corresponding author

Email

M. Baskaran - E-mail: baskirathi@gmail.com, baskaran.m@psgnursing.ac.in

J. Kavitha - E-mail: kavijay79@gmail.com, kavitha.j@psgimsr.ac.in

R. Jeyadeepa - E-mail: r.jeyadeepa@gmail.com, jeyadeepa.r@psgnursing.ac.in

R. Rathi - E-mail: rathibaskaran@gmail.com, rathi@psgimsr.ac.in

Article Type

Research Article

Date

Received May 1, 2026; Revised May 31, 2026; Accepted May 31, 2026, Published May 31, 2026
 

Abstract

An evaluation of the impact of mental health nursing competency on the academic and clinical competencies of Indian students. Competency-based education is proposed as a method to bridge the theory-practice gap in nursing. Therefore, it is of interest to evaluate a structured Mental Health Nursing Clinical Competency Model's effect on undergraduate students' academic performance, clinical competency and self-perceived confidence. A quasi-experimental design was used with 98 third-years B.Sc. Nursing students in India, who participated in a 16-week intervention comprising theoretical integration and supervised clinical practicum phases. Outcome measures, including a validated competency checklist, theory exams and OSCE scores, showed significant improvements (p < .001) across all domains, with large effect sizes. Thus, data shows that phased model effectively enhances student outcomes and offers a replicable framework for competency-based mental health nursing education.

Keywords

Clinical competency, mental health nursing, nursing education, competency-based education, clinical practicum

Citation

Baskaran et al. Bioinformation 22(5): 3050-3055 (2026)

Edited by

P Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.