Tímarit hjúkrunarfræðinga - 2019, Side 105

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Aim. healthcare professionals who have required competencies
are one of the pillars of successful operations of a university hos-
pital, as competence relates to patient safety and outcome. e aim
of the study was to explore how nurses in Surgical Services at
Landspítali university hospital assess their competence.
Method. is was a cross-sectional study and data were gathered
in 2016 using a questionnaire. nurses were asked to self-assess
their competence using the nurse Competence Scale (nCS) which
comprises 73 items in seven categories (helping role, teaching/
coaching role, diagnostic functions, managing situations, thera-
peutic interventions, ensuring quality and work role). Participants
assessed their competence for each item on a scale of 0 (very low
competence) to 10 (very high competence), and frequency of use
(1= very rare, 2= occasional, 3= very frequent, 0= not applicable).
e data were analysed using descriptive statistics and inferential
statistics.
Results. e participants (n= 66) assessed their total competence
on average at 7.2 (SD 1.1), highest for the helping role, and lowest
for ensuring quality. Self-assessed competence was significantly
higher for nurses with postgraduate qualifications than for those
without such qualifications, in helping role, work role, teaching/
coaching role and therapeutic interventions. no difference was ob-
served in self-assessed competence relating to experience in nurs-
ing, but regression analysis revealed that 14% of the variation was
attributable to years of experience in a unit and postgraduate qual-
ifications. in 22 items out of 73, ≥ 50% of nurses assessed their
competence below the median value of all participants. ese
items included educating patients and colleagues, applying nursing
research into practice and active participation in the development
of nursing in the workplace.
Conclusions. e results of this study indicate that postgraduate
qualifications and years of work experience within the same unit
influence the competence of surgical nurses. it is important to en-
able nurses in gaining postgraduate qualifications and ensure
availability of specialised training and education as the study re-
sults indicate that specialisation within nursing has increased.
Keywords: Competence, continuing education, nurses, profes-
sional development, surgical patients, surgery.
Correspondent: brynjain@hi.is
English Summary
ingadottir, B., Thorsteinsson, h. S., Sveinsdottir, h., Blondal, k.
Surgical nurses’ self-assessment of competence: a descriptive cross-sectional study