Arlene Johnston, Brigham Young University
Nursing
Description:
This presentation will review the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) program and its implications for undergraduate nursing students. Background: Quality and patient safety has become a strong focus in the hospitals. Academic institutions, however, vary in their approach to preparing student nurses in the areas of quality and patient safety. The QSEN initiative was initiated in 2007 with the charge to prepare student nurses with the knowledge, skills and attitudes (KSAs) to impact quality improvement and patient safety across healthcare. The six QSEN competencies, based upon an expert nursing panel and Institute of Medicine recommendations, have begun to be implemented across undergraduate curriculums. However, little information about the QSEN initiative has been shared with the practice setting or published in the nursing literature beyond the QSEN website. Furthermore, there is no measurement tool to evaluate the acquisition of QSEN KSAs in undergraduate nursing curriculum.
Purpose:
The purpose of this project is to describe QSEN initiative and its implication for undergraduate nursing students and to review the nursing literature related to QSEN. It is further the aim to pilot test a survey of QSEN KSAs with undergraduate nursing students.
Methods:
CINAHL database and the world wide web were searched using the key words education/teaching and quality and safety and undergraduate or baccalaureate. Survey questions relating to QSEN KSAs were developed based upon the review of literature and expert opinion. A 48-item survey plus demographics was developed and pilot tested using an on-line link sent to a convenience sample of 29 undergraduate nursing students from one university. The survey consisted of 16 knowledge and 16 skills questions rated on a 3 point Likert scale and 14 attitude questions rated on a 1-5 Likert scale. There were two items reverse coded, which were corrected before analysis. The mean responses for each of the KSAs was calculated.
Results:
Eleven articles and the QSEN website were retrieved and reviewed. The overall knowledge score mean was 1.8 (range= 1.2-2.2; SD= .26 ).The lowest knowledge scores were Institute of Medicine to err is human report (M = 1.2); conducting a root cause analysis (M= 1.5); use of SMART pumps (M = 1.7); Workarounds (M =1.7); and use of flow charts and diagrams to improve quality (M = 1.7).