Dr. Elizabeth Van Horn (Family and Community Nursing) received new funding from Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing for the project “Exploration of Competence in New Graduate Nurses.”
The primary goal of nursing education programs is to graduate competent novices who are ready to begin their nursing careers. However, since competence is either not defined or is uniquely defined by each institution, there is a gap in knowledge between how nursing education programs and their stakeholder employing institutions define competence and the skills, knowledge, and attitudes they expect of new graduate nurses. In order to bridge this gap, nursing education programs need to have a frame of reference about what employers expect of new graduates. The purposes of this study are to (1) explore the concept of competence in new graduate nurses, including its definition and evaluation the hospital setting; and (2) provide foundational data to design and conduct a larger study of nursing education programs and their evaluation of end-of-program competence in nursing students.
