Nursing Education in Jacksonville, Florida

Core competencies are the discrete and measurable skills essential for the practice of nursing (NLN, 2010)

• Human Flourishing: Promote the human dignity, integrity, self-determination, and personal growth of patients, oneself, and members of the health care team
• Nursing Judgment: Provide a rationale for judgments used in the provision of safe, quality care and for decisions that promote the health of patients within a family context
• Professional Identity: Assess how one’s personal strengths and values affect one’s identity as a nurse and one’s contributions as a member of the health care team
• Spirit of Inquiry: Question the basis for nursing actions, considering research, evidence, tradition, and patient preferences. The six updated integrating concepts are:
• Safety: Safety is the foundation upon which all other aspects of quality care are built (NLN, 2010, p. 25). A nurse who practices safely minimizes the risk of harm to patients and providers through both system effectiveness and individual performance (Cronenwett et al., 2007). Safe practice includes the individual’s purposeful use of knowledge to provide safe care in a deliberate, skillful, and informed way.
• Quality: The Institute of Medicine defines quality as the degree to which health services to individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge (IOM, 2001). Quality is operationalized from an individual, unit, and systems perspective (NLN, 2010).
• Team/collaboration: To function effectively within nursing and the interprofessional team is critical to effective and safe nursing practice. Team/collaboration fosters open communication, mutual respect, and shared decision-making to achieve quality patient care (NLN, 2010).
• Relationship-Centered Care: Core to nursing practice, relationship-centered care includes caring (therapeutic relationships with patients, families, and communities; and professional relationships with members of the interprofessional team (NLN, 2010). It integrates and reflects respect for the dignity and uniqueness of others, valuing diversity, integrity, mutual trust, civility, self-determination, and regard for personal preferences and desires.
• Systems-Based Care: Nurses practice in systems of care to achieve health care goals. Nurses must demonstrate an awareness of and responsiveness to the larger 13 context and system of health care and the ability to effectively call on system resources to provide care that is of optimal value.
• Personal/Professional Development: This refers to the individual’s formation within a set of recognized responsibilities. It includes the notion of good practice, boundaries of practice, and professional identity formation (NLN, 2010). It also includes knowledge and attitudes derived from self-understanding and empathy, ethical questions and choices gleaned from a situation, awareness of patient needs, and other contextual knowledge. The NLN believes these core concepts are critical to a transformed curriculum closely aligned with current workforce trends. The framework acknowledges these six integrating concepts as equally important.