NURSE COMPETENCY AND TRAINING

According to a report issued by the Department of Labor (1998), as the largest health care occupation, there are over 2.2 million nurses currently working in the profession. About three out of every five of these nurses work in hospitals (both inpatient and outpatient departments. Others work mostly in offices, clinics and other health and/or home health care organizations and agencies (e.g., nursing homes, social service agencies, religious organizations, etc.) About one out of every four nurses work part-time.

In terms of general training, the Department of Labor (1998) reports that in all States, nurses are required to pass a national licensing exam and can be licensed in one or more States. Licenses must be periodically renewed and some states require continuing education for license renewal.

With respect to education, there are three major educational paths to nursing: Associate degree in nursing (A.D.N.), Bachelor of Science degree in nursing (B.S.N.), and diploma. A.D.N. programs. A.D.A. programs, offered by community and junior colleges, take about 2 years to complete. Diploma programs, given in hospitals, last two to three years. Only a small number of programs, about four percent, offer diploma level degrees (U.S. Department of Labor, 1998).

Generally, licensed graduates of any of the three program types qualify for entry level positions as staff nurses. A growing number of programs requi

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nical practice training but does so within a structured program that integrates what they learn in the classroom with their actual practice in the field. Other Factors Influencing Competency of Nurses The literature suggests that in addition to amount of training and other training-related variables, there are several factors operating in terms of nurse competency. For example, in some early research Garvey (1983) suggested that competency (as measured by either performance on tests or in actual practice) is at least to some extent dependent upon the quality of the nursing program itself. Garvey (1983) feels that in many programs too little time is spent on making sure that nurses thoroughly understand those basics required of RN students and that most programs over-reach by attempting to include learning requirements for RNs beyond the basic degree requirements. Moreover, it is suggested that many programs suffer inadequacies because they do not take care in terms of developing a program congruent with the philosophy, conceptual framework and objectives of school. Extern positions can also affect competency. For example, Oermann and Navin (1991) studied the effects of externships, offered collaboratively between schools of
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Approximate Word count = 2935
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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