The effect of Nurse Mentorship System toward nursing process competency of Registered nurses

Abstract

          The purpose of this Quasi-Experimental research was to study the effect of NurseMentorship System toward nursing process competency of Registered nurses. 196 of registered nurses who worked in nursing department of Phetchabun hospital were selected by purposive sampling method. The research instrument was nursing process competency form that developed by researcher. The nursing process competency was divided to five levels including level 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Expect competency levels were targeted level 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 toward registered nurse groups that composed of Novice, Advanced Beginner, Competent, Proficient, and Expert group respectively. Three groups of competency levels were designed including expect competency level, below expect competency level and above expect competency level. The study was performed during August to December 2009, for 4 months, that consisted of three parts including nurse mentorship construction, development of knowledge and nursing process practice of registered nurses by nurse mentorship and evaluation of nursing process competency both of before and after nurse mentorship utilization. Data was analyzed by percent, mean standard deviation, Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test, Paired-t test and Chi square test. The empirical data of this study indicated that after practical training by nurse mentorship, mean of nursing process competency level was higher than before practical training significantly in all five processes (p< 0.001).Nurse mentorship evaluated mean of nursing process competency level after practical training lower than self evaluation of registered nurse significantly in all five processes (p< 0.001). Moreover, after practical tanning by nurse mentorship, registered nurse showed decrease of below expect nursing process competency level (92 decrease to 89 percent), increase of expect nursing process competency level (6 percent) and increase of above expect nursing process competency level (2 increase to 5 percent) significantly in all five processes (p< 0.001). In conclusion, this study found that nurse mentorship can be used to improve nursing process competency in all registered nurse groups. Most of registered nurse showed lowest of nursing diagnosis competency level and nursing process competency level was below expect competency level in all five processes. This finding recommends that nurse mentorship should be used to improve nursing process continuously, especially, nursing diagnosis process.