NURSING COMPETENCIES

Nursing Competencies

Introduction

It should be understood that the terms of 'Competency', 'Expert' and 'Beginner' used in this article do not exactly relate to the meanings ascribed by Benner (1984). However, her descriptive research of nursing practice contributes to the understanding of many of the concepts related to the topics of this article. Competency, as discussed in the Competency standards approach to professional education and practice, is defined as 'A combination of attributes enabling performance of a range of professional tasks to the appropriate standards.

Competency encompasses more than just a psychomotor skill. The team competency in these contexts now describes the attributes of knowledge, abilities, skills and attitudes that underlie competent performance. Competency standards specify the level of achievement expected and the tasks and contexts of professional practice in which we may see the competency demonstrated. Nurses know that psychomotor skills are important but, performed without knowledge, they do not constitute nursing. Nursing knowledge of health and disease processes is of little use without appropriate nursing skills to implement.

The abilities to plan and organize our work are of little benefit to patients or clients if the attitudes that nurses value (such as, caring and patience) are not present; therefore, integration of the knowledge, abilities, skills and attitudes of nursing is the essential key to understanding and performing competencies. Competence does not mean expert. There exist various levels of competence but each of these has a minimum acceptable level or standard. Beginners are rarely expert, but they can be competent. They perform a wide range of nursing activities methodically and well. They may be slow but develop further skills and speed in time. They have to ask many questions but they know which questions to ask. Beginning graduate nurses may be a little slow completing total patient care, be ...