Towards a competency assessment tool for nurses in ethics meetings

Nurses require specific knowledge, skills and attitudes to participate competently in various forms of ethics meetings. The literature does not state the contents of the knowledge, skills and attitudes nurses need for ethics meetings. Without such a competency profile, it cannot be assessed in how far nurses actually possess these qualities for ethics meetings.

Corroborating an existing profile of the requisite knowledge, skills and attitudes in the form of a questionnaire contributes to the development of a tool to determine the competence nurses need for ethics meetings.

In how far can this profile be confirmed by a quantitative follow-up in a random sample?

A questionnaire was developed to determine in how far nurses with prior involvement in ethics meetings recognise the earlier competency profile as important and comprehensive.

It was made available to subscribers of the digital newsletter of three widely read nursing journals in the Netherlands. Data collection and analysis took place in the spring of 2013.

Care was taken to state explicitly in the questionnaire that participation in the survey was completely voluntary and anonymous.

To a high degree, nurses with involvement in ethics meetings recognise the knowledge, skills and attitudes from the earlier interviews when presented as a survey.

Although the sample was small, the respondents and the results reflect known characteristics of nurses serving on ethics meeting.

This may be helpful to recruit and prepare nurses for professional ethics in nursing care, and to develop a tool to assess to what extent nurses actually possess competence for ethics meetings.