The QSEN Competency Legacy Threaded Through the Entry-Level AACN Essentials: Shaping the Future.

Abstract

For the last 17 years, the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) prelicensure competencies and knowledge, skill, and attitude (KSA) statements were integrated into nursing curricula. With the publication of the competency-based American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) Essentials , it is important to determine the overlap of the QSEN competencies. We developed a QSEN-AACN prelicensure crosswalk to help faculty map and integrate the 2021 AACN Essentials into their curriculum. The 6 QSEN competencies match to the 10 AACN Essentials domains except for evidence-based practice, which is listed as a concept. Fifty graduate-level QSEN KSAs were found to better align with prelicensure education and therefore important to integrate into the crosswalk. All but 1 of the original prelicensure QSEN KSA statements and all but 2 of the 50 transferred graduate-level QSEN KSAs were found in the AACN Essentials . Faculty implementing the QSEN framework can use the QSEN-AACN competency crosswalk and QSEN teaching strategies to guide their AACN Essentials journey.