ArticleSpecial issue: Quality and safety educationQuality and safety curricula in nursing education: Matching practice realities
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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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.