Elsevier

Nursing Outlook

Volume 55, Issue 3, May–June 2007, Pages 122-131
Nursing Outlook

Article
Special issue: Quality and safety education
Quality and safety education for nurses

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2007.02.006Get rights and content

Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) addresses the challenge of preparing nurses with the competencies necessary to continuously improve the quality and safety of the health care systems in which they work. The QSEN faculty members adapted the Institute of Medicine1 competencies for nursing (patient-centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, safety, and informatics), proposing definitions that could describe essential features of what it means to be a competent and respected nurse. Using the competency definitions, the authors propose statements of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) for each competency that should be developed during pre-licensure nursing education. Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) faculty and advisory board members invite the profession to comment on the competencies and their definitions and on whether the KSAs for pre-licensure education are appropriate goals for students preparing for basic practice as a registered nurse.

Section snippets

Defining the competencies

Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN), funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, was designed to address these gaps—to build on the will, to develop the ideas, and to facilitate execution of changes in nursing education. Before teaching strategies could be developed, however, the QSEN faculty needed to identify specifically what was to be achieved. Working with an Advisory Board of thought leaders in nursing and medicine (see acknowledgments), the authors reviewed the relevant

Pre-licensure nursing education

The competency definitions provided a broad framework for QSEN’s work to define pedagogical strategies for quality and safety education; however, as is evident in the accompanying article in this issue, when the competency names and definitions were used alone, the vast majority of pre-licensure program leaders stated that they already included content related to the competencies in their curricula.17 Relying on the respondent to interpret the general definitions of the QSEN competencies,

Patient-centered Care

The essential features of this competency were derived from work by Bezold,18 the Picker Institute,19 and Lorig.20 Educators have worked hard on the issues related to diversity during the last years, and curricula generally address principles of communication, physical comfort, emotional support, and education. The QSEN faculty and advisory board members believed greater attention might be needed to KSAs that are concerned with eliciting and incorporating patient preferences and values in the

Summary

At the core of nursing lies incredible historical will to ensure quality and safety for patients. Many current endeavors such as the work occurring in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-sponsored project, Transforming Care at the Bedside, demonstrate how quality/safety/improvement work attracts the hearts of nurses, resulting in the “joy in work”7 that retains the health care workforce. Attending to the development of QSEN competencies may help nurses—who love the basic work of nursing—love

Linda Cronenwett is a Professor and Dean at the School of Nursing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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  • Cited by (846)

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    Linda Cronenwett is a Professor and Dean at the School of Nursing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

    Gwen Sherwood is a Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the School of Nursing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

    Jane Barnsteiner is a Professor and Director of Translational Research at the School of Nursing and Hospital of the University of Pennysylvania, Philadelphia, PA.

    Joanne Disch is Kathyrn R. and C. Walton Lillehei Professor and Director of the Densford International Center for Nursing Leadership at the School of Nursing, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.

    Jean Johnson is a Professor and Senior Associate Dean for Health Sciences at The George Washington University, Washington, DC.

    Pamela Mitchell is Elizabeth S. Soule Professor and Associate Dean for Research at the School of Nursing, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.

    Dori Taylor Sullivan is an Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Nursing at Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, CT.

    Judith Warren is an Associate Professor at the University of Kansas School of Nursing and Director of Nursing Informatics at Kansas University Center for Healthcare Informatics, Kansas City, KS.

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