The use of big data and data mining in nurse practitioner clinical education

Nurse practitioner (NP) faculty have not fully used data collected in NP clinical education for data mining. With current advances in database technology including data storage and computing power, NP faculty have an opportunity to data mine enormous amounts of clinical data documented by NP students in electronic clinical management systems. The purpose of this project was to examine the use of big data and data mining from NP clinical education and to establish a foundation for competency-based education. Using a data mining knowledge discovery process, faculty are able to gain increased understanding of clinical practicum experiences to inform competency-based NP education and the use of entrusted professional activities for the future. •NP faculty use big data and data mining to inform competency-based NP education.•Data mining can assist to verify that clinical experiences are consistent with expected competencies and programmatic outcomes.•Many nursing faculty need continuing education in data science to design and test new models of clinical education.