The Competency of Nursing

Introduction

Today's competitive, and changing approach in the health care environment is challenging the very core of nursing practice. This advancement of nursing practice leads to the evolution of care in different health care setting. Moreover, the continuous mutation of diseases resulted in a more dynamic and comprehensive method in dealing with health care interventions.

The Competency of a person is based not on how much he/ she knows but on how much he/she uses the ways he/she knows. Being competent doesn't mean that he/she desires to supersede the other but, in terms of nursing care, aims to render quality nursing care.

Nursing practice is rendering care to individual and family in different setting. The nursing profession is one of the most noble job that a person could ever known due to the live events that the nurse is involved in. And with this, it is essential that the standard of nursing practice must always be applied and the competency of the nurse must be evaluated.

The researcher is interested in working in this study for, as what observed, many nurses take Masters Degree for granted. Others see this as another source of stress and others see this as an edge to other nurses in the Philippines. But the researcher's view in this is that taking up Masters Degree would better help to take care of a patient. Having Masters Degree is having the opportunity to render quality nursing care to every client.

On the other hand, the Standard of Nursing Practice in the Philippines according to the Board of Nursing serves as a "... tool in evaluating nurses, basis for advance nursing practice and specialization, protect the public from incompetent practitioners and yardstick for unethical, unprofessional practice of nursing. (2005). Therefore the researcher desires to assess the Level of Knowledge on the Standards of Nursing Practice of the Master of Science in Nursing Gradutes of the Graduate of University of La Salette, Santiago City.