Nursing Competence as a Developmental Task of Nursing Students in Nursing Education: A Qualitative Panel Study

Abstract

Nursing Competence as a Developmental Task of Nursing Students in Nursing Education: A Qualitative Panel Study Abstract: Background: One of the key challenges of nursing education is to foster the development of professional nursing competency. Currently, there is a lack of empirical knowledge about nursing students' subjective educational processes to be able to specifically support them in this development. Method: To reconstruct the developmental processes of nursing students, a qualitative panel study was conducted with 26 students of the three-year nursing training in Germany. Data were collected at the end of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year of nursing students' training through episodic interviews, and analysed using reconstructive-hermeneutical analysis (Kruse, 2015). Results: 'Developing nursing competency' was identified as one of the five developmental tasks. In the perception of the students, this development task focuses on the acquisition of medical knowledge, skills to carry out nursing actions and the ability to organise processes. In doing so, they ignore the subjective perspective of the people to be cared for. Conclusion: Through a cross-training overarching analyses, it becomes clear that nursing students do not succeed in developing a patient-oriented understanding of nursing regarding nursing competency. Hence, it must be examined whether the perspectives of the nursing students have changed due the stronger process orientation in the new legal nursing requirements.