Nursing Assessment Report: Competency and Capability in Nursing

This report provides a nursing assessment focusing on the core competencies required for healthcare professionals, particularly in geriatric care. It emphasizes the importance of patient-centered care, interdisciplinary teamwork, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, and the utilization of informatics. The assessment highlights the differences between capability and competency, defining capability as the potential for development and adaptation, and competency as the application of knowledge and skills in practice. It further discusses the significance of these concepts in the context of providing effective and comprehensive patient care, referencing the challenges healthcare professionals face in delivering optimal patient outcomes, including issues with patient information and the application of evidence-based practices. The report also includes a discussion on the roles of healthcare professionals, ethical considerations, and the commitment to lifelong learning in the field of nursing and healthcare.

Running Head: NURSING ASSESSMENT
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Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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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.

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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

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the doctor containing necessary and important information. They often relies on paperwork and
fails to restore the patient data to a more secured and accessible platform (Fukada, 2018).
Difference between capability and competency:
Capability is associated with something that facilitates the continuing development of the
health practitioner’s potential and ability to adapt and synthesize new information from the
experiences and expertise and work towards improving their performances in clinical practice
(Boström et al. 2018). On the other hand, competency describes the work medical practitioner
does by applying knowledge, skills and experience towards improving the patient’s health
(Fukada 2018). Capability framework emphasizes on realising the people’s full potential, the
ability to learn from experiences, developing the ability to adapt and apply knowledge and skills
and envisioning the future by contributing to making it happen. These elements are consistent
with ongoing professional development, lifelong learning and the objectives of personal
development, which are all essential to the development of health practitioner today and in future
(Boström et al. 2018). Capabilities include several elements like-
 An element in performing, which defines what individuals need to be and what to
accomplish in the workplace.
 An ethical element, which focuses on incorporating cultural understanding, beliefs and
cultural consciousness into skilled exercise.
 A component which stresses reflective practices in action.
 The ability in a changing context of healthcare services to implement efficiently
evidence-based interventions.
 Commitment to work with new professional modelling and to accept lifelong learning
responsibility.

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References:
Boström, A.M., Sommerfeld, D.K., Stenhols, A.W. and Kiessling, A., 2018. Capability beliefs
on, and use of evidence-based practice among four health professional and student groups in
geriatric care: A cross sectional study. PloS one, 13(2), p.e0192017.
Ellis, G., Whitehead, M., Robinson, D., O'Neill, D. and Langhorne, P. (2011). Comprehensive
geriatric assessment for older adults admitted to hospital: meta-analysis of randomised controlled
trials. BMJ, 343(oct27 1), pp.d6553-d6553.
Fukada, M. (2018). Nursing Competency: Definition, Structure and Development. Yonago Acta
Medica, 61(1), pp.001-007.
Kahan, S. and Kushner, R.F., 2016. Nutrition in clinical medicine: a core competency for
healthcare providers. Medical Clinics, 100(6), pp.xvii-xx.
Roberts, J.P., Fisher, T.R., Trowbridge, M.J. and Bent, C., 2016, March. A design thinking
framework for healthcare management and innovation. In Healthcare (Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 11-14).
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Søreide, H., Kyrkjebø, D. and Råholm, M.B., 2019. Challenges in municipality healthcare
services—The nurse leaders' perspective. Nursing Open.
Summit, I., Greiner, A. and Knebel, E. (2019). The Core Competencies Needed for Health Care
Professionals. [online] Ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Available at:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK221519/ [Accessed 18 Jul. 2019].
White, L., Styron, J. and Gubler, C., 2017. HEALTH PROMOTION OF UNDERSERVED
OLDER ADULTS USING AN ACADEMIC-COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP MODEL.
Innovation in aging, 1(suppl_1), pp.612-612.

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