Monday, 18 November 2013
Joan A. Ellis, PhD, RN, CNS, CNE
Educational Services, Woman's Hospital, Baton Rouge, LA
Staci H. Sullivan, MSN, CNS, RNC-NIC, NEA-BC
Infant and Pediatric Services, Woman's Hospital, Baton Rouge, LA
Learning Objective 1: Describe strategies geared toward improving standardization in the measurement of levels of performance in nursing practice.
Learning Objective 2: Identify how technology can be utilized to streamline and further refine the career ladder application process.
For many years, career ladder programs have been utilized by organizations to recognize excellence in clinical practice, as well as provide promotion opportunities for nurses at the bedside. These programs were not only adopted to recognize clinical expertise, but also to promote high standards of patient care. Unfortunately, competency assessment has been difficult to define in many cases, and advancement processes have lacked standardization in many career ladder initiatives. As part of our ANCC Magnet reaffirmation journey, our nursing division was committed to transforming our existing career ladder into a comprehensive professional development model grounded in theory, with clearly defined levels of prefessional performance. To reach our goal, a Professional Development Ad-hoc committee was established consisting of nursing administrators, educators, and clinicians from all specialty areas. The committee also worked collaboratively with the Information Systems team to design an electronic career ladder application to be utilized by committee members to conduct "blind reviews" of applications with participant identifiers removed. This program also generates reports relevant to certification rates, professional develoment activities reported by level, and committee participation.
After meeting bi-weekly for one year, a new Professional Development Program was implemented that is based on Jean Watson's Theory of Caring, as well as Patricia Benner's "From Novice to Expert" Model. ANA Standards of Professional Performance were also utilized to develop a customized, weighted "rubric" that clearly differentiates each practice level. An electronic portfolio is maintained by program participants that include all professional developement activities for the year, which is submitted as part of the electronic application process with the completed rubric.
The revised program fosters accountibility, and encourages participants to continuously broaden the scope of their professional development endeavors. Clearly, the design of this program could be utilized to standardize and further refine the nursing career ladder application process globally.
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