QSEN Core Competency Study

Every day, nurses are expected to carry out excellent health-care. However, it wasn’t until recently that standards of practice in nursing education were more clearly defined and updated to correlate advancements in technology and care. As a result of this constantly evolving health care environment, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) conducted a study to identify “core competencies” within nurse education to improve nursing practice (Peterson, 2003). The competencies include patient centered care, an ability to work in interdisciplinary teams, utilize evidence based practice, quality improvement, and informatics (Peterson, 2003). The core competencies started by the IOM were further developed into what is now referred to as QSEN: Quality

They confirmed six crucial aspects of nursing as the following: patient centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence based practice, quality improvement, safety, and informatics (Cronenwett et al., 2007). The authors of QSEN outlined how a nurse, or nursing student, should be able to implement these competencies through their “knowledge, skills, and attitudes,” referred to as KSAs. In order for nursing students and new nurse graduates to develop the KSAs required to provide excellent overall patient care, they must learn how to accomplish them. Quality improvement, in particular, as defined within QSEN guidelines, can be taught in nursing programs via academic practice partnerships. Academic practice partnerships can educate nursing students on how to implement quality improvement, will work to benefit the patients and hospitals they are affiliated with, and can promote a lifelong practice of personal quality improvement and self-reflection

IOM and QSEN competencies, such as quality improvement, can be used to promote education beyond nursing school and develop a culture of quality and safety. In “Stimulating a Culture of Improvement: Introducing an Integrated Quality Tool for Organizational Self-Assessment,” Coleman recognizes quality improvement as one of the skills nurses should use to self-assess and carry throughout their practice for the benefit of overall patient care (2015). In order for this to occur, a “quality tool and template” was developed. The tool defines various qualities of nursing, such as care coordination, clinical processes and effectiveness, efficiency, equity, use of informatics, and others to promote a “culture” of improvement (Coleman, 2015). Professional nurses can utilize tools like this to continually self-evaluate their own care as the initial steps in improvement of the health system in which they