Exploring Students Nurses’ Preparedness and Readiness for to Care for Critically ILL Patients and Implication for Patient’s Safety
Amina Hemida Salem
Abstract
Background: Unsafe nursing care provided to critically ill patients by unqualified nurses can cost a patient’slife. When nursing care falls short of standards because nurses are lacking knowledge and or practical skills,nursing education programs shoulder much of the responsibility.Aims: aims of the current study were to explore the students’ nurses (senior students) preparednessand readiness to care for critically ill patients, determine the students’ nurses’ perceptions toward theirpreparedness and readiness to practice as critical care nurse and, compare between the students’ nursesclinical knowledge and their self – perceptions.Method: To fulfill the aims of the study, senior students in the Faculty of Nursing at the University ofAlexandria were recruited during the last month of the internship year. Three tools were used to collect thedata. Tool one “Generation of Core Competencies” that was aimed at identifying crucial competencies thatare required for new students’ nurses to provide competent and safe patient care. Tool two “Exploring thestudents’ nurses’ preparedness and readiness to care for critically ill patients” that was aimed to exploringthe clinical knowledge of the students’ nurses (objective tool) and Tool three “Casey-Fink Readiness forPractice Survey (CFRPS)” that was aimed to determining the students’ nurses’ perceptions toward theirpreparedness and readiness to practice as critical care nurse (subjective tool).Results: Results of the current study revealed that the median knowledge score was generally low (MD:14) denoting insufficient students nurses’ knowledge. The average number of correctly answered questionsby participants was only 14 out of 50 (mean, SD 14.12, 4.03).However, the nurses’ perceptions or attitudestoward their preparedness and readiness to practice as a critical care nurse were generally positive and high.About 50% of nurses answered at least 11 questions as “strongly agree” out of 15 questions of perception.Conclusions: Although the study was conducted at the end of the internship year as the clinical internshipexperience improved the nurses’ knowledge and perceptions of readiness for practice, there was acontradiction between the student nurses’ knowledge (low) and perceptions of their readiness (high).