Baskaran M, Kavitha J, Jeyadeepa R, Rathi R
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.