Evaluation of clinical competence of novice nurses from the perspective of head nurses, a cross-sectional descriptive study in Mashhad University of Medical Sciences in 2019

Undergraduate education should be able to establish the basic level of clinical competence to care for and maintain patient safety in novice nurses. Examining the clinical competencies of novice nurses from the perspective of nursing managers can identify aspects of the competency of novice nurses that need to be improved.

The present study is a cross-sectional descriptive study that was conducted to evaluate the clinical competence of novice nurses from the perspective of their head nurses in selected teaching hospitals of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences in 2020. 100 novice nurses working in three major teaching hospitals Mashhad participated in this study. Data were collected using a clinical competency evaluation and a demographic information form. The Creighton Competency Evaluation Questionnaire was completed by the head nurses. Stata software version 14.1 and descriptive and robust regression indices were used to analyze the data.

The results showed that the mean age of participants was 24.23±1.72 and their mean clinical competence from the perspective of head nurses was 59.55 ± 16.26 equal to 65% of total score. Using robust regression, the relationship between competence and the studied variables was investigated and there was no significant relationship with any of the variables (p>0/05).

 Improving the competence of nurses to increase the quality of pateint care is one of the main program of nursing managers.The clinical competence of novice nurses in the dimensions of patient assessment and clinical judgment from the perspective of head nurses had the lowest score that should be planned to improve it. Considering that there was no significant relationship between contextual variables and variables such as interest in the profession, the duration of work experience with clinical competence, it needs further study on the validity of competency assessment from the perspective of head nurses.