Relationship between Nurses’ Competencies and Quality of Patient Care at Intensive Care Units

Abstract

Background: Competent, good and safe intensive and critical care nursing is based on the knowledge, attitudes and values, experiences and skills of the ICU nurses. So, employing interested and competent nurses and considering the standards required in the ICU can increase the quality of care. The purpose of the study: Investigate the relationship between nurses" competencies and quality of patient care provided at intensive care units. Study design: A descriptive co-relational design was used to carry out this study. Study setting: The study was conducted in the intensive and intermediate care units at Menoufia University Hospitals. Study sample: A convenient sample of 145 staff nurses and 145 critically ill patients, taken care of by the studied nurses. Data collection instruments: The first instrument was a modified version of the Intensive and Critical Care Nursing Competence Scale. The second instrument was the patient"s care quality observation checklist. Results: The present study showed that more than half of the studied nurses (54.5%) had good level of competency and it was associated with good total knowledge level (88.2%), positive attitudes (97.2%) and satisfactory level of practice (95.9%). The study results illustrated that the majority of the studied patients (61.4%) had moderate level of quality of patient care. There was no statistical correlation between socio-demographic characteristics of the studied nurses and total competency level and also those of the studied patients and total quality of care level (p>0.01). Conclusion: There was a highly statistical significant positive correlation between the competency of nurses and the quality of patient care at Intensive Care Units. Recommendations: Competence should be assessed regularly in clinical practice to explore individual learning needs for continuing education to improve the quality of health care.

Work Engagement as Mediator of Competence and Self-Efficacy of Service Quality

“…It means that simultaneously competence, self-efficacy, and work engagement contribute 90.9% in improving the service quality of health workers, and the remaining 9.1% is influenced by other factors not examined. This result aligns with previous research from (Osman, Ibrahim & Diab 2019;Faraji et al, 2019) that competence positively and significantly affects service quality (Park & Choi, 2020;Lee & Ko, 2020). It shows that self-efficacy has a positive and significant effect on service quality.…”

“…Several relevant research results prove that competence has a significant effect on service quality (Osman, Ibrahim & Diab, 2019;Faraji et al, 2019), self-efficacy has a significant effect on service quality (Park & Choi, 2020;Reichardt et al, 2020;Lee & Ko, 2020). Furthermore, work engagement has a significant effect on service quality (Mahboubi et al, 2017;Wake & Green, 2018;Hulsoft, Demerouti & Le Blanc, 2020), so it can be assumed that the research hypothesis: H4 : Simultaneously, competence, self-efficacy, and work engagement affect the quality of service for health workers in inpatient installations.…”

“…Individuals must possess competencies as characteristics related to knowledge and skills (Deasler, 2017), and the competence of health workers aims to form the ability to provide standardized health services on patient safety by using their knowledge (Jiang et al, 2016). Several relevant studies have shown that the competencies possessed by individuals can increase work engagement (Haruna & Mathandan, 2017;Hontake & Ariyoshi, 2017;Hu et al, 2021) and able to improve the quality of service (Osman, Ibrahim & Diab, 2019;Fajari et al, 2019).…”

“…Additionally, issues with the dynamics of service quality reflect issues with the quality of healthcare provided to patients in inpatient rooms due to health workers' incompetence in providing care in inpatient settings. Even though studies have shown that patients can expect higher-quality services when health workers are competent (Osman, Ibrahim & Diab, 2019;Fajari et al, 2019).…”

Self-reported Competences of Expatriate Practicing Nurses in Kuwait: A Descriptive Study

“…Regular assessments of nursing competence using valid tools should be performed from the nurses' perspectives as well as from the head nurses and managers' viewpoint in order to be able to identify and meet the nurses' professional development needs to thereby ensure quality nursing care and positive patient outcomes. Several studies had pointed out the positive association between nurses' competence on quality of patient care and services (Flinkman et al, 2017;Novita & Prasetyo, 2022;Osman et al, 2019), and patient safety (Abu Zaitoun et al, 2022;Fukada, 2018).…”