Essay On Nursing Competence

The understanding of competence concepts in managerial study is heavily implied through the behavioural, functional or standard, the situational, the meta-competency and the holistic approach in the development of managerial competence. Nursing competence is heavily influenced by managerial competence in order to have a clear understanding of over the concept. However, in nursing competence literature the concept is still not clearly identifying and has a debate concerning the concept of competence which references to the position of nursing manager, staff or qualified nurses. Few nursing researchers discussed understanding of competence by the learners’ perspective which this study is warranted for. From nursing competence literature most

authors discuss and describe the competence specifically such as personal, moral and clinical competence, few of them were discussing the competence as holistic that required those three competences. Based on view the issues surrounding nursing competence, trainee nurses’ competence development are heavily influenced by several factors and environment in order to live their experience and influence their understanding of competence acquisition at the workplace.

The past study highlights, trainee nurses needs in necessary basic nursing competency requirements such as knowledge, problem solving, critical thinking, ability and skill as well as moral agility for self-development that influence trainee nurses experience in providing healthcare services.

MOHE highlights, the core competencies such as application of knowledge and critical thinking as most competencies that nurses need to develop and apply. Beside of that, nursing competence literature highlight clinical placement as an important venue for trainee nurses acquire their necessary competence even though there is an issue of overcrowded clinical placement which can hinder the student nurses’ experience acquisition and caused by the lack of competence and challenges at the workplace. The acquisitions of student nurses competence are influenced by several situational factors that can divide by two which is internal and external factors. The internal factors consist of personal context and clinical competence, whereas external factors consist of organizational context consists of clinical environments, clinical placement and the competency based education and training. However, nursing competence literature is lacking in order to highlight how student nurses’ acquire their competence at the workplace and how competence is being conceptually understood and addressed by the student nurses training

session.

However, the different experience may acquire a different or new competence at work. Trainee nurses need to be able to acquire sufficient knowledge and clinical skills in order to transform them into effective practice. The trainee is expected to develop the required knowledge, clinical skills, experience and competence during their clinical practice and clinical placement in order becoming competent nurses at the workplace. Thus, clinical experience plays an important role in helping trainees to acquire those necessary competencies to be competent at the workplace. As a social learner, trainee nurses are always exposed to their clinical practice to acquire knowledge and learnt from the people surrounding by understanding, observing, investigating and experiencing to prepared to become competent in future career.

The theory of informal learning is appropriate in the process to acquire competence. On that assumption, it is underlying that, trainee nurse is a social learner and learnt from the social, community and also working environment. This would enable trainee nurses learnt from the observation as well as their experience. Furthermore, this theory enhances the social learning among nursing students to get close to the social relationship which is consist of a supervisor, clinical staff and peers. There is strong indication that a professional learning takes place in the workplace and be a main key to competence acquisition. However, the theories of SL: LPP is less applied in the Malaysia context. Thus, this study would contribute the theory of SL: LPP as a social learning theory ofstudent nurses to understand competence based on their experience of informal learning. Figure 2.4 illustrated the surrounding issues among nursing student competence acquisition.