Education Needs Assessment 2022

Running head: EDUCATION NEEDS ASSESSMENT
Education Needs Assessment
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

2EDUCATION NEEDS ASSESSMENT
Introduction
Education Needs Assessment or ENA among nurses is the systematic analysis of
current competencies of nurses considering their current knowledge and skills. It helps the
nursing educators to determine the current needs of education that can effectively bridge the
gap. In this report an Education Needs Assessment of nurses has been done to develop a
learning plan for the nurses of the selected organisation (Barnes, 2014). In the following
section a secondary review has been done on ENA as the background of this study. In the
next part the data collection process has been presented with the data collection tool. After
that the result from the research have been analysed to form the recommendations for the
lesson plan for the nursing student. In recommendation, the lesson plans for nursing students
have been presented.
Background:
Medical knowledge is increasing rapidly and constantly evolving as well while
expanding scopes for the nurses to learn new thinks at their very early stage of professional
development. With the increasing number of medial researches and expanding medical
knowledge even a senior nurse needs to update his or her knowledge and skill on medical
science and clinical practices. The most essential aspect of this learning activity is that it
enables the learners to improve their performance that eventually affects the work efficiency
of the entire medical or clinical workforce of an organisation (Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality, 2015). Along with that, there are certain strategies that are also very
effective to make the nursing students more competent through allowing them learning new
topics and healthcare interventions. In this section the significance of ENA or Educational
Needs Assessment and the implementation of this assessment to improve the professional
career and performance of the nurses will be discussed.

3EDUCATION NEEDS ASSESSMENT
ENA or Education Needs Assessment can fall into different categories including the formal
gap analysis, analysis of personal skill, analysis of professional skill, analysis of knowledge,
analysis of future needs, analysis of collective workforce efficiency and many more.
However, there are certain overlaps between these learning assessment types that needs more
in depth assessment tools to be involved. Learning Needs Assessment or LNA is another very
similar term that implies assessment of current nursing competencies of nurses. Both ENA
and LNA are required where a gap has been identified in a healthcare organisation. Gaps are
commonly expected when novices enter the workforce or when an experienced practitioner is
exposed to new patient populations, equipment, or experiences. Gaps also exist when new
knowledge becomes available from research findings, through benchmarking, and from
national initiatives (Clark, 2014). This types of gap analysis refers to the systematic
examination of both knowledge and skill gap. Knowledge is the understanding the theoretical
perspective of medical science which is the base of any nursing practice such as knowledge
in Respiratory therapy, knowledge in neural science, knowledge in psychology and many
more. On the other hand the nursing skill is a set of nursing practices that are more
implementable part of their knowledge such as communication skill, team working, computer
skill and other. Most of these skills help the nurses to apply their theoretical knowledge about
medical science and nursing in their professional practices. Therefore, deficiency in any of
these attributes can hugely impact the professional performance and competency of a nurse
(Owen & Schmitt, 2013). Eventually these gaps can stop the workforce developmental
growth and event can decline the current healthcare service quality. The poor service quality
can hamper the service consumer trust and loyalty that can eventually reduces the
profitability of the organisation as well.
From the above discussion it can be found that assessment of current nursing skill and
knowledge with the nursing workforce. Grant (2012) described a gap analysis as a method to

4EDUCATION NEEDS ASSESSMENT
identify discrepancies when comparing performance with expected competencies. A gap
analysis can be used to assist individual learners or groups of learners. A formal gap analysis
is a commonly used method to document the need for continuing education (CE) activities for
healthcare professionals. There are certain ENA tools that help an organisation to assess their
own nursing workforce competency effectively. These tools can be segregated into three
categories namely observation, examination and cross-sectional data collection tool
(Mesˇtrovic & Rouse, 2015). Each of these tools has individual set of advantages and
limitations depending on the platform and scope of utilisation. The observation tool is used
though observing the performance of the nursing stuff over a long period. These data are
collected through supervisory monitoring and documentation as well as success rate analysis.
These data are used to score the competency level of each nurses in their each performance
attributes. The major advantage of using this tool is that this tool allows collecting more in-
depth and accurate data without making the nursing students aware of it. However, the major
limitation of this assessment is its restricts the assessor to assess the knowledge base of the
nurses while focusing only on the resultant performance rate. Examination is another
assessment tool that uses a set of questions including medical science related questions and
scenario based questions. This process can be extend up-to more than 1 days, however not
more than 1 week. In this process the competency of the nurse can be accessed through
gauging the number of correct answers provided by the nurses. It is a very useful tool to
understand the knowledge of the nurses. However, the limitation of this tool is that this tool
cannot effectively measure the performance of the nurses in regular professional practice.
Cross sectional tools are used in two format, interview and survey (Hecimovich, & Volet,
2014). In both of these format nurses can share their own thoughts about their performance
efficiency and educational needs to improve their performance. The advantage of using this
tool is that this tool is very comprehensive to collect an overall marks on skills and