No abstract

The use of standardized terminologies could be advantageous. However, there are shortcomings in nursing documentation and the use of standardized nursing terminologies that obstruct evaluation of nursing care.

On the basis of the findings of this study, we argue that it is important for hospital managers to recruit leaders that focus on individual nursing care and can highlight needs and instigate change. It seems also important that the organization takes advantage of the potential of skilled facilitators.

Aims:To identify clusters based on graduating nursing students' self-reported professional competence and their achievement on a national examination. Furthermore, to describe and compare the identified clusters regarding sample characteristics, students' perceptions of overall quality of the nursing programme, and students' general self-efficacy (GSE). Design:A cross-sectional study combining survey data and results from a national examination.Methods: Data were collected at two universities and one university college in Sweden in January 2017, including 179 students in the final term of the nursing programme. The study was based on the Nurse Professional Competence Scale, the GSE scale, and results from the National Clinical Final Examination. A two-step cluster analysis was used to identify competence profiles, followed by comparative analyses between clusters.Results: Three clusters were identified illustrating students' different competence profiles. Students in Clusters 1 and 2 passed the examination, but differed in their This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.