[Evaluation of clinical competence. The immediate future of nursing]

In this article, the authors analyze the concept of professional competence and they describe some of the methods destined to be used in the evaluation of said competence in nursing professionals. The authors describe different levels of professional performance to which an evaluation may be carried out according to the conceptual model developed by Miller. Special emphasis is placed on the third level of evaluation which is based on simulations of professional practice whose protagonists are the so called simulated or role-playing/standardized sick. One type of very novel evaluation test is the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) which makes use of, besides the simulated or role-playing/standardized sick, other mediums such as manikins, standardized tests, open-ended short answer questions, etc. This is one of the most complete clinical competence evaluation methods currently available, although one should not forget that this evaluation is carried out in a simulated, laboratory, setting.