Selecting potential nurses: a review of the methods

The following paper presents an overview of the literature in relation to personnel selection and its particular application to the selection of candidates for nurse education. In industry and indeed general management circles within the National Health Service, dynamic methods are being used to select middle and higher management personnel. Yet the largest group of National Health Service employees to be selected, nurses, whose training costs represent no small amount in annual budgets, appear to be accepted on highly inconsistent and subjective grounds. Material derived from personnel management and occupational psychology demonstrates the importance of systematic staff selection and the resulting discussion questions why nursing retains such methods for selecting student nurses.