Nursing competency and educational needs for clinical practice of Korean nurses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the nursing competency and educational needs of nurses on clinical nursing practice in order to provide basic evidences for a developing nursing education program. Participants of this study were 211 nurses working at a general hospital in Seoul, Korea. The data were collected using self-report questionnaires on nursing competencies and educational needs. Collected data were analysed using an SPSS program for frequency, mean, standard deviation, t-test, ANOVA, and Scheffe's post-hoc comparison. The participants' nursing competency was significantly different based on their age, marital condition, level of education, current working department, and clinical experience. Among the subcategories of nursing competency, the ethical nursing competency was found to be the highest, whereas scientific nursing competency was shown the lowest competency. The order of top three educational needs of the participants was emergency nursing, intensive nursing care, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation in that order. To ensure the provision of nursing performances to healthcare service recipients grounded in a higher level of nursing competency, it is important to support nurses via evidence based effective clinical nursing education that is developed for the nurses' educational needs in relation to their clinical experiences.