Elsevier

Nursing Outlook

Volume 55, Issue 3, May–June 2007, Pages 151-155
Nursing Outlook

Article
Special issue: Quality and safety education
Quality and safety curricula in nursing education: Matching practice realities

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2007.02.004Get rights and content

Health care delivery settings are redesigning in the wake of staggering reports of severe quality and safety issues. Sweeping changes underway in health care to address quality and safety outcomes lend urgency to the call to transform nursing curricula so new graduate competencies more closely match practice needs. Emerging views of quality and safety and related competencies as applied in practice have corresponding implications for the redesign of nursing education programs. Nurse executives and nurse educators are called to address the need for faculty development through strategic partnerships.

Section snippets

Quality and safety competency development and the practice-education gap

There are 6 quality and safety competencies for nurses identified by QSEN7: patient-centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, safety, and informatics. These 6 competencies, which apply across the health professions, are not separate linear concepts but each interacts with the others to create the whole. Educators need exposure to the ways in which practice settings are being redesigned and staff re-educated to consider ways to craft innovative

Transition to practice

Graduates from pre-licensure programs cannot become competent or proficient in practice overnight. A period of immersion in practice is required; yet, nursing lacks the funded residency programs granted other professions. Instead, new graduates may work with preceptors through the difficult transition and orientation phases for the support, coaching, and monitoring for risk of error even up to a year after graduation.23, 24 Without such support, new graduates may drop out of nursing, thus

Implications for nurse executives and nurse educators

Expected retirements of registered nurses in the next decade will render the nursing workforce increasingly dependent on new graduates working in complex clinical settings. Nurse executives have a stake in assuring that new nurses are prepared with the competencies that will assure safe patient care, and deans of schools of nursing have a stake in assuring that their graduates are prepared to contribute to the continuous improvement of the health care systems in which they work. Innovative,

Gwen Sherwood is a Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Nursing.

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  • Cited by (0)

    Gwen Sherwood is a Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Nursing.

    Karen Drenkard is a Senior Vice President Nursing/Chief Nurse Executive at Inova Health System, Falls Church, VA.

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