Nursing Assessment: Core Competencies for Healthcare Professionals

Running Head: NURSING ASSESSMENT
NURSING ASSESSMENT
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NURSING ASSESSMENT
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While treating patients, the health care professionals must possess core competencies,
irrespective of their discipline, to meet the needs of a patient and deliver patient centred care
through evidence based practice, informatics and quality improvement approaches. (Summit,
Greiner and Knebel 2019). The elderly are the fastest growing sectors of society, and they
account for the major increase in admissions to Hospitals. They are most at risk of acquisition of
disability, a decline in cognitive functionality or admission to residential care either as a result of
illness or as a consequence of treatment. Older people have more complicated requirements with
medical, behavioural, psychological and cultural requirements that possibly exist together (Ellis
et al. 2011). Therefore by treating them comprehensively considering the core competencies
gives a contrasting model of care to traditional approaches, which are multidimensional and
multidisciplinary in order to deal with single problems. The competencies include:
 Patient-centred care- All healthcare providers must identify, care and respect about
patient’s preferences, differences, values, their needs, pain, sufferings, relieve and give
them a continuous care, listen to their requirements, share decision making and also
respect their decisions by informing and communicating them the information, advocate
them of disease prevention, wellness and make all the necessary measures towards
promoting their health.
 Working in interdisciplinary teams- The healthcare professionals should communicate,
cooperate, and integrate care to ensure a reliable and continuous care.
 Employing evidence-based practice- The healthcare professionals should incorporate in
their treatment the best clinical practice and skill and consider patient values for the best
care and also take part in research activities to a feasible extent.

NURSING ASSESSMENT
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 Applying quality improvement- It falls under the responsibility of the health care
professionals to identify errors, risks and hazards in treatment and implement basic
principles for safety design such as simplification and standardization. They should be
able to understand and ensure an improved quality of care in response to the needs
patients and community. They should also be able to design and test interventions that
aim to change the processes and system of care with the purpose to improve the overall
quality.
 Utilization of Informatics- The health care professionals must manage the knowledge,
communicate and support decision making by using information technology (Summit,
Greiner and Knebel 2019).
Although there have been many encounters between doctor and patients that has resulted into
an effective and improved health outcome of the patients, but this is not always the scenario
since health care professionals are not always supported by a system that aims to provide the best
care to the patients. The healthcare professionals often fail to provide a patient centred care.
They fail to inform the patient’s sufficient information regarding their illnesses and the
approaches towards reducing or managing their health condition (Søreide, Kyrkjebø and Råholm
2019). They even lack collaboration and communication among them that eventually results in
the failure in providing quality care to the patients by preventing long term complications
associate with it. Evidence based practice is not applied in providing quality care to the patients.
They fail to monitor the services and health outcomes other patients have received that are
directly related to the health status and the patients are treated based on the graph obtained by
comparing the health outcomes over a period of time. Health care professionals do not utilize
informatics containing an update of patient’s health status and the update of the encounter with