Differentiated essential competencies: a view from practice.

This article describes the results of strategies to elicit views of practicing nurses by the Texas Board of Nursing regarding competencies expected of new graduate licensed vocational nursing/LPN, associate degree/diploma, and baccalaureate nurses. The implications of these perceptions regarding the competencies expected of new graduates in Texas are considered, with questions posed for future exploration.

Academic partnerships to increase nursing education capacity: centralized faculty resource and clinical placement centers.

The North Texas Consortium of Professional Nursing Programs and Practice Partners is a regional academic partnership of nursing education and practice organizational leaders working together to share innovative ideas and best practices and to improve efficiencies that impact nursing education. The region's 15 nursing schools produced 25% of the Texas graduates, or 1,782 graduates, in 2008-2009. Yet, 3,522 graduates are needed in 2013-2014 to meet the projected north Texas demand. Barriers to increasing enrollment and graduation numbers were the lack of sufficient faculty to meet demand and insufficient numbers of clinical placement sites. To increase the capacity for graduating the numbers of nurses needed, the region developed a three-pronged plan to overcome each of these barriers: expansion of partnership members and development of a regional computerized clinical placement center and faculty resource center. The academic partnership expanded its members to include the 15 schools of nursing, more than 50 hospitals, and the Dallas Fort Worth Hospital Council (DFWHC) Foundation for the purposes of governance of the two proposed computerized centers and strategic planning for increased capacity. The faculty resource center is a centralized, one-stop shop for those interested in teaching and those needing faculty. The Centralized Clinical Placement Center is expected to streamline the nursing student clinical placements process and monitor the numbers of students per site at a given time so as to ensure that placements are at capacity and that schools of nursing benefit fairly in placing students in specialty areas to meet course objectives.

Competency development in new registered nurse graduates: closing the gap between education and practice.

The gap between a new registered nurse graduate's education for practice and actual practice requirements of new registered nurses has long been an accepted fact in nursing. This article describes the development of an intervention from the academic side of the gap to improve the competency of nursing students before graduation. The intervention is noteworthy because it was developed collaboratively between academia and practice. The three-pronged intervention included development of learning modules based on the top 10 high-risk, high-volume patient conditions; faculty and staff educator development in learning strategies to enhance competency development; and sharing of products with the 84 schools of nursing in Texas.

The Texas model of differentiated entry-level competencies of graduates of nursing programs.

The Board of Nurse Examiners and the Board of Vocational Nurse Examiners for the State of Texas updated the state's competency-based education model in collaboration with stakeholders in nursing service, state nursing organizations, and the deans and directors of the state's 82 board-accredited professional nursing programs. Based on this collaborative effort, 14 differentiated entry-level competencies with associated knowledge and clinical behaviors/judgments were identified that set standards for graduates of vocational, diploma, associate, and baccalaureate degree programs.

Nursing Students' Perception of Electroconvulsive Therapy: Impact of Instruction with an Electroconvulsive Therapy Videotape.

There has been little study of attitudes toward and knowledge of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Likewise, there have been no studies of how accurate information about ECT may be communicated. The authors studied the attitudes and opinions toward ECT of thirty-five nursing students before they had received any formal instruction on its use. The same subjects then viewed a didactic videotape explaining and demonstrating ECT. There were significant improvements in overall knowledge and positive opinions of ECT after this educational exposure.