Suggestions for fostering competent clinical nurses

抄録

Most nurses start their careers as clinical nurses and clinical fields require them to be sensitive to changing medical environments and to absorb current medical and nursing knowledge actively. It is common for new nurses to be frustrated because of a big gap between what they learned at school and what they should practice. Therefore, practical strategies are needed to help nursing students to be well prepared to move to clinical nursing. Some suggestions are summarized for fostering competent clinical nurses from a clinical nurse's viewpoint. First, the identity of nursing as a unique discipline should be emphasized at school. Nurses who have clear answers to what nursing is, can have a pride as a nurse and deliver nursing care more productively. Second, the curriculum of the nursing school should be standardized even though three-year college and four-year university backgrounds co-exist in the same license. Therefore, the school of nursing should guarantee students' abilities to step into clinical nursing. Third, the school of nursing should utilize expert clinical nurses as clinical professors with adequate compensation. Clinical nurses with master and doctoral degrees will remain in the clinical field long as a linking agent between theory and practice and as a role model. Fourth, an internship program should be considered to allow nursing students to broaden their scope of nursing and to deepen their clinical experience.These strategies can also help clinical nursing be accepted as a unique and challenging profession among nurses and other healthcare members.