Description of the core competencies to be included in an emergency nurse training programme

Abstract

Emergency nursing is an evolving field in Kenya with the Nursing Council of Kenya (NCK) yet to list it as a speciality area. This study wished to identify and describe the core competencies that should be included in an emergency nurse training programme based on the views of nurses and doctors who work in emergency units in a level 1 hospital in Nairobi, Kenya. The researcher used qualitative explorative and quantitative descriptive designs in phases 1 and 2, respectively, and convenience and purposive sampling. The study found that the respondents emphasised the inclusion of 137 (93.2%) of the 147 skills in the questionnaire as core competencies and disagreed with 10 (6.8%). Concomitantly, the vast majority of the respondents (93.6%) supported the inclusion of the skills compared to those (6.3%) that did not. Based on the findings, the researcher made recommendations of the core competencies to be included in the programme.