Background: Continuing professional development (CPD) in nursing is defined as ‘a life-long process of active participation in learning activities that assist in developing and maintaining continuing competences, enhancing professional practice and supporting achievement of career goals’. Research has shown that inability to access resources and activities for CPD influences quality of care and adversely affects nurses’ satisfaction, recruitment and retention. Although more and more research regarding CPD is done, a comprehensive overview about the needs of nurses for successful CPD is missing. Conclusions: All nurses strive for CPD. However, organizations need to recognize nurses' personal goals and unique strategies as this leads to different needs in CPD. In addition, resources must be made available and accessible before CPD can be successfully pursued by all nurses.
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Although nursing has been an academic discipline for decades, the infrastructure for nursing research in many countries is still fragile and struggling. Postdoctoral nurses have difficulties developing sustaining careers in nursing research due to lack of career opportunities. Considerable research has been conducted on leadership and mentoring in various areas of nursing. We aimed to systematically review the literature investigating leadership programs and mentoring for postdoctoral nurse researchers, as well as the influence of leadership and mentoring on research productivity, research career development, leadership knowledge and skills, the nurses' health and well-being, staff relationships, work culture and collaboration, salaries and postdoctoral nurses' experiences.
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Nursing Leadership is an important competence to develop in order to provide quality of care and prevent attrition of nurses. This research program looked into the perceptions and experiences of nurses on practising leadership. Next to that supporting the development of nursing leadership was addressed. The program has a mixed-method, action research design in which 75 in-depth interviews and 24 focus group interviews and quantitative data of 435 nurses form the backbone. According to hospital nurses, nursing leadership is related to proactiveness and voicing expertise in order to deliver good nursing care. Nevertheless, they do not feel fully competent and knowledge deficits were detected on aspects of the bachelor nursing profile, such as evidence based practice. Working-culture factors can either inhibit or encourage nursing leadership. The further awareness of unconsciously using expertise and knowledge deficits as well as team development towards a continuous safe learning environment are necessary steps for the enhancement of nursing leadership. A Nursing Leadership model was developed in which generic personal leadership competencies combined with expertise of the nurses' level of education and degrees form the essence of shared leadership in teams focussed on the realisation of good nursing care.
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Perceptions of community care and placement preferences in first-year nursing students: A multicentre, cross-sectional studyMargriet VAN IERSEL MSc1, Corine H.M. LATOUR PhD1, Rien DE VOS PhD2, Paul A. KIRSCHNER PhD3,5, Wilma J.M. SCHOLTE OP REIMER PhD1,4.1 ACHIEVE - Centre of Applied Research, Faculty of Health, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands2 Centre of Evidence Based Education, Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands3 Open University of the Netherlands, Heerlen, The Netherlands4 Department of Cardiology, Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 5 University of Oulu, Oulu, FinlandBackground: Despite increasing shortages of well-educated community nurses, far too few nursing students choose community care for their future profession; a strong societal problem that urgently needs resolution. This study provides a solid understanding of causes for the fields’ low popularity by exploring first-year baccalaureate nursing students' perceptions of community care, and their placement preferences along with their underlying assumptions. Insights from this study can be used by educators to positively influence students’ perceptions with targeted curriculum redesign strategies.Summary of work: A cross-sectional multicentre survey study was performed. First-year nursing students from six universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands (n = 1058) participated in the study from September-December 2014. The students completed the ‘Scale on Community Care Perceptions’ (SCOPE), consisting of demographic data, current placement preferences, and three subscales measuring the affective component of community care perception, perceptions of a placement, and a profession in community care. Descriptive statistics were used. Summary of results: For placement, 71.2% of the students prefer the general hospital, 23.4% another area, and only 5.4% choose community care. Students consider opportunities for advancement and enjoyable relationships with patients as most important for their placement. Community care is perceived as a ‘low-status-field’ with many elderly patients, where students expect to find little care variety and few opportunities for advancement. Discussion and conclusions: This study shows why few students show an interest for a career in community care. Students’ perceptions of the field are at odds with aspects they regard as important for their placement. They also underestimate the complexity of community care, where specific traits are required to ensure appropriate nursing care in patients’ homes. Take-home messages: The results of this study allow for three recommendations. First, students and educators should be aware of misconceptions about career opportunities in the field of community care. Second, educators should provide students with experiences that foster an optimistic and realistic career outlook on community care. Third, growing shortages in the community care sector urgently require representatives from the field and educators to collaborate to make community nursing an attractive career alternative.Keywords: Career choice; Students
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Background: The aim of this study is to validate a newly developed nurses' self-efficacy sources inventory. We test the validity of a five-dimensional model of sources of self-efficacy, which we contrast with the traditional four-dimensional model based on Bandura's theoretical concepts. Methods: Confirmatory factor analysis was used in the development of the newly developed self-efficacy measure. Model fit was evaluated based upon commonly recommended goodness-of-fit indices, including the χ2 of the model fit, the Root Mean Square Error of approximation (RMSEA), the Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI), the Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR), and the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC). Results: All 22 items of the newly developed five-factor sources of self-efficacy have high factor loadings (range .40-.80). Structural equation modeling showed that a five-factor model is favoured over the four-factor model. Conclusions and implications: Results of this study show that differentiation of the vicarious experience source into a peer- and expert based source reflects better how nursing students develop self-efficacy beliefs. This has implications for clinical learning environments: a better and differentiated use of self-efficacy sources can stimulate the professional development of nursing students.
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Aims: The aim of this study is to evaluate the nurses' experiences with the Nursing Crisis Meetings and to identify nurses' needs regarding the future governance structure. Design: Qualitative study. Methods: Two focus groups were conducted in February 2022 with participants of the Nursing Crisis Meetings (N= 15). We used thematic analysis to describe themes. Results: We identified five themes: opportunity to speak up, call for nursing leadership, call for control over practice and autonomy, development of a governance infrastructure and development of the professional nurse role. Conclusion: Nurses experienced the Nursing Crisis Meetings to be a positive and empowering infrastructure, which facilitates the unique opportunity to speak up and share experiences and concerns. This new infrastructure is a promising strategy to engage nurses during a pandemic and to build on a professional governance structure. Impact: This paper highlights the need for nurses to speak up and be engaged during the COVID-19 pandemic and gives a practical example of how to put this infrastructure into practice.
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Community care is becoming increasingly important. In the Netherlands, the percentage of people over the age of 65 is expected to increase to 22% by 2025, leading to more elderly patients, often with long-term and complex health problems (multimorbidity). Because many of these patients continue to live at home until a very old age, nurses are increasingly working outside of institutions. The 17 Dutch Bachelor nursing programmes responded to this development with a new national education profile 'Bachelor Nursing 2020 (BN2020)’ with more elements of community care. However, despite the increase in extramural care, the Dutch labour market has a shortage of community nurses with higher professional education qualifications, partly because most nursing students focus on the general hospital setting as the environment for their future career. Whether this is based on a perception of community care that deters making this choice has never been systematically investigated. It is also unclear whether a more community-oriented curriculum will better equip students for working in community care. In response to these issues, the nursing programme at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS) redesigned its curriculum to include more elements of community care. Three perspectives were chosen for the redesign: (1) the influence of lecturers as role models, (2) positive placement experiences, and (3) five new ‘community-based’ themes in education. These new themes are as follows: patient self-management, shared decision-making, collaboration with the patients’ social system, healthcare technology, and allocation of care. The redesign also includes a ‘paved way’ into community care in the form of a coherent and attractive programme for interested students.This thesis describes whether and how the curriculum-redesign within higher professional education in nursing can be effective in terms of (1) stimulating a positive perception of community care and (2) realising a form of community care in line with the new themes in BN2020. In other words, that students will base choices in their actions/nursing interventions on these new themes in the education profile.
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Second career teachers (SCT) are key role models in vocational education (VE) because they prepare students for the vocational practice they were part of, and they bring up-to-date vocational knowledge and skills into VE schools. Therefore, the early leaving of SCTs in VE is a problem, adding to the worldwide teacher shortages. Induction programs have been developed to support starting teachers to grow into their new profession and to diminish high attrition rates. However, it is argued that current induction programs fail to support SCTs adequately. For instance, induction programs rarely adapt to SCTs’ various needs, such as recognizing and integrating previously developed competencies and specific backgrounds. Further-more, SCTs’ induction programs in the specific context of VE are largely under-studied. This study explores the experiences of SCTs in VE during their induction programs regarding four themes identified in research on SCTs in other education sectors: 1) professional identity development, 2) learning processes, 3) tailor-made coaching, and 4) co-creation of induction programs. Eleven SCTs from eight Dutch VE schools were interviewed. The data show a rich variation of SCTs’ experiences. For example, they experienced the opportunity to develop their professional identity as teachers while preserving and including their former identity as practitioners of the vocation they teach for. Yet, only a few SCTs experienced co-creation of the induction program, which seems to have a positive impact. The insights of this study offer an understanding of what SCTs in VE go through and what might support them during their induction.
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Inaugural lecture, delivered upon public acceptance of the endowed professorship in Professionalisation of Nursing and Care in Elderly Care by Prof. Dr. Robbert J.J. Gobbens at Tilburg University on 29 September 2023.
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This project studies whether a redesigned baccalaureate nursing curriculum in a University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands can stimulate positive interest for the field of community care. In many Western countries, healthcare is changing from institutional care delivery to caring for patients in their own homes. Problematic is that most nursing students orientate on a career in the hospital and they do not see community care as an attractive option, due to a limited and often mistaken view of the field. Their career choices lead to increasing shortages in the labour market, which in many Western countries is a societal problem urgently needing attention. Providing students with a curriculum with more elements of community nursing could help them build a more positive perception of the field, leading to more students choosing this area as a career.The curriculum-redesign was based on quantitative and qualitative research about first-year students’ perceptions, placement preferences and underlying assumptions on the field. First, a cross-sectional multicentre survey study (n = 1058) was conducted using the SCOPE (Scale on COmmunity care PErceptions) questionnaire. The findings confirm the hospital’s popularity, with community care being perceived as a ‘low-status-field’ with many elderly patients and few challenges. Students’ perceptions of community care appear to be at odds with things they consider important for their placement (i.e., opportunities for advancement and enjoyable relationships with patients).To better understand the factors underlying the perceptions, a focus group study with first-year students at the start of their programme (n = 16) was performed.This led to formulation of eight redesign themes, namely:(1) variety and diversity,(2) challenges,(3) improving people's health,(4) collaboration,(5) role models,(6) patient- or environment-based perceptions,(7) self-efficacy, and(8) immediate vicinity.First-year students have clear ideas about what they see as important in a placement, but their perceptions do not always appear to be realistic.To remedy these misperceptions, recommendations for curriculum redesign strategies were formulated. Curriculum designers can more prominently highlight the complexity of community nursing in the theory part of the curriculum. As many students strive for challenges, in-depth knowledge about community nursing can be presented about aspects that students lacking experience in the field are not aware of (e.g., working in an interprofessional network). In the courses, patient cases can be presented that do not fit the stereotypical views of community care commonly held. Also, as role models are influential, it is important that students collaborate with mentors in the field with an appropriate level of education, who can act as a source of inspiration, but who also create a structured and supporting learning environment. Finally, it is useful to organise meetings where political developments and labour market issues in healthcare are discussed. This can potentially increase awareness of these topics and contribute to well-informed career decisions. These strategies can potentially foster a more optimistic and realistic career outlook on the community care field.
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