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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Evaluating professional competence.

Professional competence evaluation should involve attention to its intellectual and social context, and not just worry about technical fine points. The author frames professional competence evaluation broadly, containing sections on social issues, conceptual problems, and technical matters. The author uses illustrations from podiatric medicine and from other professions that have similar concerns about the evaluation of practitioner competence. Several suggestions are given for improving evaluating practices.

Clinical Competence↗

Teaching clinical ethics in the residency years: preparing competent professionals.

Formal training in clinical ethics must become a central part of residency curricula to prepare practitioners to manage the ethical dimensions of patient care. Residency educators must ground their teaching in an understanding of the conceptual, biomedical, and psychosocial aspects of the important ethical issues that arise in that field of practice. Four aspects of professional competence in clinical ethics provide a useful framework for curricular planning. The physician should learn to: (1) recognize ethical issues as they arise in clinical care and identify hidden values and unacknowledged conflicts; (2) think clearly and critically about these issues in ways that lead to ethically justifiable courses of action; (3) apply those practical skills needed to implement an ethically justifiably course of action; and (4) judge when the management of a clinical situation requires consultation with individuals or institutional bodies with additional expertise or authority. We argue that these practical goals can be accomplished with a relatively modest emphasis on the theoretical aspects of medical ethics.

Bioethical Issues↗

Nurses and occupational violence: the role of organisational support in moderating professional competence.

OBJECTIVE: Occupational violence as experienced by professional nurses has been extensively researched. However, the majority of studies have focused primarily on psychological and emotional outcomes and have not identified any interventions that may reduce the impact of aggressive behaviour on professional competence. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between organisational support, occupational violence and perceived professional competence of professional nurses in Australia. DESIGN: A model testing research design was used to test the hypothesis that organisational support, as experienced by nurses, would moderate the relationship between occupational violence and perceived professional competence. SETTING: Nurses registered in Division 1 of the Nurses Board (Victoria, Australia). PARTICIPANTS: A systematic random sample of 380 registered nurses from the target population of nurses in Victoria was identified. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: The relationship between organisational support, occupational violence and perceived professional competence of professional nurses in Australia. RESULTS: The result showed that there was a significant effect of occupational violence on perceived competence. Analysis of the moderating effect of organisational support on the relationship between occupational violence and professional competence showed there was significant organisational support and occupational violence interaction. Overall, the data analysis demonstrated the hypothesis was upheld that the negative effects of occupational violence on perceived professional competence will be moderated by perceived organisational support. CONCLUSIONS: The failure to receive appropriate organisational support may result in lowering professional nurses' competence levels, causing a significant problem for the profession in that a reduction in professional competence has significant implications for patient care. The findings heighten the responsibility of the nursing profession to become more aware of the needs of professional nurses.

Adult↗

Design of integrated practice for learning professional competences.

To acquire professional competences that entail performance of complex skills, an authentic learning environment is required focused on the integration of all aspects of competences. However, most educational programmes offer separate building blocks, such as separate modules for knowledge and skills. Students accumulate what they have learned in these modules as they progress through the curriculum. In this paper the authors advocate the Four-Component Instructional Design model (4C/ID), which offers a whole-task approach to course design for programmes in which students learn complex skills. The four core components of this approach are: learning tasks, supportive information, just-in-time information and part-task practice. A concrete example from medical education will be presented to clarify both the general ideas behind this approach and the differences between the whole-task approach and conventional educational designs.

Education, Medical↗

Transitional portfolios: orchestrating our professional competence.

Reflective professional development results from thoughtful planning of goals and meeting learning objectives. With rapid changes in health care resulting in major reevaluation and even modification of the role and functions of an occupational therapy practitioner, producing a historical record of competencies in order to learn from one's own experience and to plan for change is essential. A new use of the portfolio is presented to show that a portfolio can be more than the typical repository of completed projects. The transitional portfolio is introduced as a tool for one to self-direct professional development through thoughtful engagement with artifacts created during one's career in relationship to professional goals and desired roles. The transitional portfolio process is holistic, flexible, and reflective. It can serve as a way to document accumulated knowledge and skill acquisition as well as facilitate thoughtful, planned reflection on one's career development in occupational therapy. This article describes the use of transitional portfolios to connect professional development learning experiences, accomplishments, and future opportunities for occupational therapy practitioners.

Career Mobility↗

The assessment of professional competence.

Valid assessment of professional competence has proven to be an elusive goal. Objective tests, direct observation of performance, overall ratings of competence, and simulations have been tried and found wanting in one way or another. Objective test items are criticized as being unrealistic and therefore invalid. Direct observation tends to be very unreliable and therefore invalid. Simulations and overall ratings of competence share both of these flaws to some extent. Basically, you can't win. This article outlines some of the many ways to lose and some ways to cut these losses. In doing so, it proposes a general framework for evaluating the validity of measures of competence, and it uses this framework to examine the strengths and weaknesses of three approaches to the assessment of professional competence: direct observation, simulation, and objective testing.

Clinical Competence↗

[Professional competence and contraceptive care].

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the technical competence of professionals carrying out activities related to contraceptive care. METHODS: Evaluative research in the field of health was conducted in eight districts of the State of Ceara from July to September 2003. Data was collected by means of interviews with 29 nurses working in the Family Health Care Program within these districts and 50 people being attended by this program. Observations of the Family Health Care Units were a complementary source of data within this study. RESULTS: The majority of nurses had received some form of training regarding contraception and the technical norms regulating their use. However, professional barriers were reported by the nurses and others were identified by lay persons being attended by the program, that indicate the need to provide better training for professionals engaged in this area of care. The nurses recognized they had deficits in information and communication skills as well as technical deficits in dealing with contraception. CONCLUSIONS: There are gaps in professional competence with regard to contraceptive care that, when associated to the lack of systematization of team work, generates distortions in the quality of care. Team work was characterized by the lack of definition of team members' specific attributions and tasks.

Adolescent↗

Professional competence in medicine.

Professional competence in medicine is under the microscope following a year of government and media attention directed at the performance of doctors and outcomes for patients. The ability of the profession to self-regulate has been questioned and the roles of the state, the universities, the Royal colleges and the postgraduate deans are shifting. This paper provides a context for considering these important changes.

Clinical Competence↗

Enhancing professional competence through developmental approaches to supervision.

There has been a recent increase in interest in defining and describing the competencies for professional practice in psychology. Perhaps the most important mechanism for enabling the acquisition of competencies is the process of supervision. This article takes the position, based on a review of relevant research in supervision and the author's experiences, that developmental theories of supervision have stimulated considerable research and provide a direction for future work in research and practice. It is argued that the most detailed of these theories, the Integrated Developmental Model, provides a useful framework for understanding how supervisees change over time and how various supervision environments (broadly) and supervision interventions (specifically) can enhance or detract from the development of professional competencies.

Awards and Prizes↗

Professional competence and palliative care: an ethical perspective.

The aim of this article is to explore an ethical view of professional competence by examining the professional competence of physicians in the context of palliative care. A discussion of the four dimensions of professional competence--knowledge, technical skills, relationships, and affective and moral attitude--leads us to the conclusion that "habits of mind" are important in every aspect of professional competence. This observation is then considered in the context of virtue ethics and ethics of care. Virtue ethics focuses on personal qualities and moral attitudes, while the ethics of care concentrates on the way these qualities are lived out in specific care relationships. Our conclusion points up the importance of education in ethics in the development of professional competence, and argues that because palliative care involves intense human interactions, integrating palliative care into the medical curriculum may improve the ethical culture of health care as a whole.

Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice↗

[Continuing medical education in pediatrics: maintaining of professional competence with different interactive models].

The forming of professional competence constitutes the primary mission of the university. It follows that the maintenance of professional competence is part of that same mission. Physicians will always remain the first motor of their own competence, but the university will play a major role in organizing and providing continuing medical education activities. At the University of Montreal, many CME programs are regularly offered to practising physicians concerned by pediatric patients (400 pediatricians and 7,000 family physicians). These programs include the following collective activities: 1), biannual convention on pediatric updates; 2), one-day meeting on selected topics; 3), advanced pediatric life support courses; 4), regional conference touring programs by university staff. We have also developed the following individual CME activities: 1), CME letter; 2), self-evaluation questionnaires; 3), miniresidency programs; 4), CME TV series; 5), problem-solving slide series. All these activities are planned according to a need assessment basis and an on-going evaluation process. Priority is given to interactive methods of student-teacher relationship.

Education, Medical, Continuing↗

[Health professional competencies in relation to essential public health functions: contribution to the design of pedagogical projects in nursing].

The development of competencies among health professionals in relation to the Essential Public Health Functions (EPHF) is part of a number of initiatives that are meant to face the need for services that can lead to the resolution of health problems, considering the transformations occurred in the health sector and in the workplace. This article's objective is to make a theoretical reflection on the theme of professional competencies, so that we can contribute to the development of political-pedagogical projects for health training and primarily for nursing training. For that matter, we introduce the competency-based model. These competencies are in accordance with the EPHF and with the competencies proposed so far, and are aimed at contributing to the development of interdisciplinary, critical, and reflexive education models.

Brazil↗

Peer assessment of professional competence.

BACKGROUND: Current assessment formats for medical students reliably test core knowledge and basic skills. Methods for assessing other important domains of competence, such as interpersonal skills, humanism and teamwork skills, are less well developed. This study describes the development, implementation and results of peer assessment as a measure of professional competence of medical students to be used for formative purposes. METHODS: Year 2 medical students assessed the professional competence of their peers using an online assessment instrument. Fifteen randomly selected classmates were assigned to assess each student. The responses were analysed to determine the reliability and validity of the scores and to explore relationships between peer assessments and other assessment measures. RESULTS: Factor analyses suggest a 2-dimensional conceptualisation of professional competence: 1 factor represents Work Habits, such as preparedness and initiative, and the other factor represents Interpersonal Habits, including respect and trustworthiness. The Work Habits factor had moderate, yet statistically significant correlations ranging from 0.21 to 0.53 with all other performance measures that were part of a comprehensive assessment of professional competence. Approximately 6 peer raters were needed to achieve a generalisability coefficient of 0.70. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that it is possible to introduce peer assessment for formative purposes in an undergraduate medical school programme that provides multiple opportunities to interact with and observe peers.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗

Competent professionals and modern methods: state medicine in British Columbia during the 1930s.

Little has been written about the formation of state medicine in early-twentieth-century Canada, particularly during the Depression era. Indeed, many historians and policy analysts have assumed that this was a time of stagnation and retrenchment in state health provision. To foster a more nuanced analysis of the formation of the Canadian medical state during the Depression decade, this article focuses on British Columbia and the public health initiatives brought in by the provincial Liberal government of T. D. Pattullo. In B.C., an energetic cadre of policymakers and bureaucrats sought to reform existing services by using professionally educated personnel, centralized administrative hierarchies, community education, and the surveillance of target health populations. Funding from the provincial government and the Rockefeller Foundation permitted considerable expansion in a range of public health sectors that included vital statistics, rural health centers, tuberculosis and venereal disease treatment schemes, and laboratory services. This article tells the story of this important period by bringing together details of the professional and personal lives of key individuals--the majority of whom were men--and exploring the new provincial health programs that were developed in B.C. during the interwar years.

British Columbia↗

Professional competence--can it be accurately measured or defined?

Professional competence is a complex and dynamic concept. The literature is explored and definitions of competence discussed. The paper identifies the current difficulties in defining and measuring competence. Recommendations are to identify the importance of self-assessment, clinical supervision and reflective practice as components of professional practice.

Employee Performance Appraisal↗

A comparative study of professional competence of nurses who have completed different bridging programmes.

The aim of the study was to compare professional competence of nurses who completed different bridging programmes. Forty professional nurses from two different bridging programmes participated in the study. The newly qualified registered nurses were all from the province of Kwazulu- Natal working in various hospitals. The researcher utilized Slater Nursing Competencies Rating Scale. The instrument had the following categories (a) psychosocial (individual), psychosocial (group), (c) physical needs, (d) general, (e) communication and (f) professional implications. The results showed that newly qualified nurses from different bridging programmes were professionally competent. Age, experience and examination results had no relationship with the professional competency of the newly qualified nurse.

Adult↗

[Development of professional competence in public health nurses].

PURPOSE: Significant changes that are occurring in the community health care system, require that public health nurses who work for local governments to not only provide direct care but also to coordinate health care teams and participate in policy making. The purpose of this study is to investigate the current system of developing professional competence in public health nurses, and to consider ways to improve it. METHOD: The subjects, randomly chosen, were 100 chief public health nurses and 298 staff nurses in Hokkaido. Sixty-four chief nurses, 44 beginner nurses, 87 proficient nurses and 88 expert nurses responded. The data were collected with a self-administered questionnaire which necessitated the subjects to make a self evaluation of their practical competence and circumstances of its development. RESULT: Self evaluated competence, in making accurate assessments of individual needs and initiating direct care, developed with their experiences in the job, and was generally high. However, the questionnaire showed that self evaluation of their work and ability to do theoretical analysis and research was low and did not progress in conjunction with the length of work experience. Policy making experience was limited and policy making competence was evaluated as low, but there was an expectation that this competence would develop in time. Almost all of the respondents expected their professional competence to progress to higher levels. In particular, beginner nurses wanted to gain practical care competence; proficient and expert nurses wanted to develop their powers of theoretical analysis and do more research, while chief nurses were keen to gain competence in the area of policy making. The respondents reported that they sometimes attended academic conferences, but hardly did any research. CONCLUSION: Low self-evaluation of public health nurses reflect a basic immaturity as a profession. They need to establish their profession and to increase their self-evaluated competencies as their careers develop. These findings showed the importance of establishing a system of continuing education that will cultivate competence in various aspects of their job and also motivate self study. These findings also reveal the importance of collaboration between the university as a vehicle for theoretical work and research and the work place as the embodiment of practical application.

Clinical Competence↗