A guideline for competency requirement of critical care nurses / Marilyn S. Agravante 6

Thesis (M.A.) Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, 2006;A thesis presented to the faculty of the Graduate School of Health Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Nursing 56

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ABSTRACT: In health care today, the complexity of patient needs in the critical care requires of nurses a well-developed knowledge base, and value system that lends it to make decisions in daily practice. To maintain a high standard of quality care the individual care nurses' competency should be determined objectively. If the competency level of the nurse reveals shortcoming, she should be guided to achieve the level of competency necessary to facilitate quality critical care nursing. Given the realities of the nursing shortage and practice in some institutions of hiring new graduates in the critical care despite ongoing controversy among nursing service personnel and educators over the suitability of this setting for beginning practitioners, what is needed now is a clear course of action, a guideline for competency of the critical care nurses that can be used to direct the continuous training and education for both seasoned nurses and new graduate nurses. Hence, this study aimed to formulate and describe such guidelines. The study compared and contrasted the competency requirements of a critical care nurses and the profile variables of the critical care nurses in terms of their age, length of critical care nursing experience, academic preparation and work setting. And from the findings of the study, a guideline of competency requirements for critical care nurses was formulated and described. A sampling population0f 56 critical care nurses participated in this study, using purposive sampling. The study was conducted in tertiary government and private hospitals and utilized a 40-item checklist lifted from an article of Scribante (1996). The statistical treatments used were percentages and weighted means. T-test distribution was used to measure the significant difference between the competency requirements of a critical care nurse and the profile variables of the critical care nurses with a level of significance .05. The study found out that majority (59%) of the critical care nurses belong the 31 years old and above age group and 68% of the respondents have been working in the critical care units for less than 3 years. This is because these nurses have been working in the regular units before they were assigned to critical care units. Most of the (71%) are assigned in specialized critical care units and 57% have attended post-graduate studies. All of the competency requirements of a critical care nurses were all recommended except for one item in the cognitive competence. The respondents did not recommend the guideline that critical care nurses do not work in a ritualistic and unthinking way in the clinical care setting. The following conclusions were drawn based from the findings of the study: (1) There is no significant difference between the competency requirements of a critical care nurse and age and length of service of the critical care nurses (2) There is a significant difference between the competency requirements of a critical care nurse and the academic preparation as well as the work setting of the critical care nurses. The results of this study highlighted the importance of a guideline of competency requirements of critical care nurses and a need to improve the quality nursing care in the critical care areas.

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