Comparison of Expected Optimal and Actual Competencies in Clinical Setting

Friday, July 15, 2011: 1:45 PM

Riitta E. Meretoja, PhD
Corporate headquarters, Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa, Helsinki, Finland
Leena Koponen, PhD
Shared Services, Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa, Helsinki, Finland

Learning Objective 1: The learner will be able to understand how shortfalls between expected optimal and nurses’ actual competencies can be specified by the systematic three-step model.

Learning Objective 2: The learner will be able to understand the advantages of using a group consensus method when predicting nurses’ strategic competencies for future.

Effective use of nursing resources and competencies are critical strategies when tackling the worldwide nursing shortage. Although future challenge is globally to focus the developmental targets in health care, limited information is available on methods for how to predict optimal competencies. The purpose of this study was to test an tentative systematic three-step model to compare expected optimal and actual competencies in clinical setting. Perioperative context was chosen as an example of a fast developing acute care with high patient volumes and increasing demand for productivity  A multiprofessional group of experts on perioperative care were recruited to this study (n=24). They predicted the effects of future challenges on perioperative care and specified expected optimal competencies by using the Nurse Competence Scale (NCS) before and after group discussions.  The expert group discussions were aimed to achieve a group consensus of the expected optimal competencies.  Registered Nurses (n=88) and their managers from five different units conducted paired assessments of the actual level of nurse competence with the NCS instrument. We compared expected optimal and actual competencies by using descriptive statistics. Group consensus discussions solidified experts’ evaluations about the optimal competence level. Significant shortfalls between expected optimal and nurses’ actual competencies were identified. The findings show that the systematic three-step model with a consensus group method was sensitive to specify the developmental targets for the future.