An evaluation of a clinical competency toolkit for nurses and midwives

The National Council of Nurses and Midwives in Ireland Commissioned the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin, through an open tender process to develop and test a toolkit to assist service managers, nurse and midwife managers and nurses and midwives in clinical competency determination and competency development planning.This paper provides an overview of the development process of the toolkit and its links to existing competency frameworks for nurses’ and midwives’ and documents published by theNational Council. The presentation will provide details on the evaluation process used to valuidate the toolkit in Ireland through teh use of a mixed-method approach in sixteen pilot sites. A purposive sampleof 455 registered nurses or midwives were recruited to participate in the survey aspect of the pilot. In total 208 questionnaires were returned representing 46% of the total number distributed. The questionnaires sought experiences of using competencies, and opinions on the structure, content, relevance and utility of the toolkit, plus feedback on using the tools provided within the toolkit. Participants were also given the opportunity to provide opinions on how to improve the toolkit in an open response section, a demographic section was also included. In total, 45 people (73% response rate) also participated in six focus group interviews. A semi-structured interview schedule developed by the team was used to guide the discussion. The schedule addressed the areas of relevance, credibility, readability, helpfulness, and user friendliness.</p