Nursing and Midwifery in Scotland: Being Fit for Practice

Abstract

1.1 Introduction The debate about the competence of newly qualified nurses and midwives has a long and contentious history. Much of this debate has not been informed by a strong evidence-base, but has often relied on anecdote, personal experience and deeply held opinion. Recently, Clark and Holmes (2007) reported findings that in England ward mangers have low expectations of newly qualified nurses, who themselves reported feeling poorly prepared for their new role. Whether this reflects an accurate picture of real competence is open to question and this potential disjuncture between judgements about competency and actual competency is at the heart of this evaluation. The wider political debate on pre-registration curricula shows little sign of disappearing with the current RCN General Secretary questioning the competence of newly qualified nurses (Snow & Harrison 2008). Such pronouncements by high-profile figures have characterised much of the debate around preregistration education since the Project 2000 curriculum. The literature outlined in this chapter will extend to exploring social cognitive theory (Bandura 1977). Many evaluations of pre-registration curricula are atheoretical and it is the intention of this evaluation to avoid such a significant limitation by explicitly locating the evaluation within a theoretical framework.