Student nurse selection and predictability of academic success: The Multiple Mini Interview project.

Background: With recent reports of public enquiries into failure to care, universities are under pressure to ensure that candidates selected for undergraduate nursing programmes demonstrate academic potential as well as characteristics and values such as compassion, empathy and integrity. The Multiple Mini Interview (MMI) was used in one university as a way of ensuring that candidates had the appropriate numeracy and literacy skills as well as a range of communication, empathy, decision-making and problem-solving skills as well as ethical insights and integrity, initiative and team-work.

Objectives: To ascertain whether there is evidence of bias in MMIs (gender, age, nationality and location of secondary education) and to determine the extent to which the MMI is predictive of academic success in nursing.