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Professional competence of practising nurses
Author(s) -
Numminen Olivia,
Meretoja Riitta,
Isoaho Hannu,
LeinoKilpi Helena
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of clinical nursing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.94
H-Index - 102
eISSN - 1365-2702
pISSN - 0962-1067
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2702.2012.04334.x
Subject(s) - competence (human resources) , nursing , descriptive statistics , medicine , psychology , nonprobability sampling , family medicine , population , social psychology , statistics , mathematics , environmental health
Aims and objectives To compare nurse competence in terms of its quality and frequency of action in medical, surgical, paediatric/obstetric/gynaecological and psychiatric clinical fields. Background One challenge of current health care is to target practising nurses' competencies to optimal use. Therefore, a systematic assessment of nurse competence is justified. Studies using the N urse C ompetence S cale have found that nurses' competence is on a good or very good level and it increases with age and work experience. Design A cross‐sectional comparative survey using the N urse C ompetence S cale. Methods A purposive sample of 2083 nurses in a major U niversity H ospital in F inland participated in this study in 2007–2008. Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics' anova with B onferroni correction, and P earson/ S pearman correlation coefficients were used to analyse the data. Results The overall level of competence of nurses was good, and the quality of action correlated positively with the frequency of action. Nurses in the psychiatric field reached somewhat higher overall mean scores than nurses in other clinical fields. On item level, nurses seemed to be the most competent in actions related to immediate individualised patient care, the maintenance of their own professional competence and commitment to nursing ethics. Age and particularly work experience were positively correlated with the competence. Conclusion Findings from this large data corroborate previous study results on the category level assessment of nurse competence using the N urse C ompetence S cale indicating a good level of competence. On item level, findings revealed more detailed themes of nurse competence, which complements earlier knowledge retrieved from the category level analysis and could be used to target nurses' competencies to even more optimal use. Relevance to clinical practice Competence assessment and targeted interventions are recommended as tools for the management for planning nurses' career development and continuing education to ensure competent and motivated work force and high‐quality care.