PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to identify clusters of nursing competency, and investigate the influence of reflective thinking, team learning climate, and learning organization building according to nursing competency clusters. METHODS: Participants were 244 clinical nurses who worked in 4 general hospitals in Gwangju Metropolitan City. Data were collected by self-report questionnaires during June and July, 2011. Nursing competency, levels of reflection hierarchy, team learning climate, and learning organization building were measured. Data were analyzed using frequencies, means, t-test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficients, and K-means cluster analysis with SPSS/WIN 20.0 version. RESULTS: Nursing competency correlated positively with intensive reflection, reflection, team learning climate, and learning organization building (p<.001). There were three clusters of nursing competency in a clinical ladder, which were derived from cluster analysis, grouped as high, middle, and low competency. Intensive reflection, reflection, team learning climate, and learning organization building showed significant differences according to grouping of nursing competency. CONCLUSION: The results indicate that developing intensive reflection, reflection, team learning climate, and learning organization building would be useful strategies for enhancement of nursing competency.
Career Mobility ; Climate ; Hospitals, General ; Learning ; Professional Competence ; Surveys and Questionnaires ; Thinking

PURPOSE: This study was a methodological research conducted to develop a clinical ladder system for operating nurses. METHODS: Participants were 20 OR nurses, working in C Hospital, who had a mean tenure of 6 years and 10 months. Data collection consisted of 4 focus group interviews during May and June 2009. The content analysis method of Kim and Lee (1986) was used to analyze the data. Two clinical expert groups consisting of 16 nurses verified the content validity of the preliminary system from September 16 to 26, 2009 using Kim's tool (1999). RESULTS: The final clinical ladder system consisted of goals, core values, and 4 domains of practice related to core values, which were defined as professional value, perioperative nursing practice, education/research, and collaboration/leadership. Eleven nursing competencies and 44 behavior indicators were included in accordance with the 4-step ladder. The 4 operation systems for the clinical ladder system were the promotion system, continuous learning system, reward system, and support system. CONCLUSION: The results indicate that nursing managers need to pay more attention to developing a clinical ladder system for nurses.
Career Mobility ; Data Collection ; Focus Groups ; Learning ; Operating Rooms ; Perioperative Nursing ; Reward

PURPOSE: This study was to evaluate the strengthening process of advanced beginner's nursing competence through the concept mapping methods. METHODS: This study was conducted with focus group study for 1 month from November to December 2012 (n=5). Data were analyzed through open coding, axial coding and selection coding stage. RESULTS: Advanced beginner to represent the experience of nursing empowerment and the three categories of the nine concepts were derived. The first category is 'able to see the entire search.' This concept is to start a search query, the search process of thinking, behavior change is expected. The second category is 'behavior change through the acquisition of knowledge.', and this concept is the embodiment of knowledge, confidence rising, and action changing. The third category is 'nursing empowerment', the aesthetic, ethical, and personal knowledge acquisition, as well as self-growth. CONCLUSION: Advanced beginner saw the full flow through the concept mapping and obtained knowledge, and changed behavior. Thus, the concept mapping is effective to strengthen the nursing competence.
Clinical Coding ; Focus Groups* ; Humans ; Mental Competency* ; Nursing* ; Power (Psychology) ; Thinking

This study has been conducted for the purpose of identifying the levels of knowledge and attitude about dementia, and exploring the degrees of practice and the relationship among these variables in nursing assistants caring institutionalized demented elders. The subjects were 87 formal caregivers from 3 dementia-specialized nursing facilities, 2 dementia-specialized hospitals, 1 general psychiatric hospitals, and 3 general nursing homes. The data were gathered from July 10th to August 5th, 1998 through interviews by questionnaires. The measuring instruments of this study were developed by the researcher and proven for their reliability and validity. The collected data were analyzed using SAS program. 1) The lowest score among 6 sub-areas about practice showed on this subarea of maintenance of remained ADL function, offering stimuli and activities to demented elders was the second. 2) The third hypothesis of "the higher the attitude score they have, the higher the practice score they do" was supported (r=.370, p=.025). 3) The influencing factors significantly on knowledge were educational status, learning experience about taking care of patients, learning experience about dementia during last a year. 4) A factor of the period of taking care demented elders have significantly influenced on the attitude about dementia. 5) The influencing factors significantly on practice were age, marital status, learning experience about taking care of patients, learning experience about dementia during the last a year. 6) The most difficult situation the subjects perceived in taking care of demented elders was managing the aggressive and resistive behaviors of demented elders.
Activities of Daily Living ; Caregivers ; Dementia* ; Educational Status ; Hospitals, Psychiatric ; Humans ; Learning ; Marital Status ; Nursing Homes ; Nursing* ; Reproducibility of Results ; Surveys and Questionnaires

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to develop an instrument to assess emergency room nurses' knowledge and performance of triage nursing. METHODS: The instrument was developed through the stages of conceptual construction, item development, and validity and reliability testing. For the validity and reliability testing, data collected from 48 emergency room nurses using questionnaires was analyzed through descriptive statistics, factor analysis, and reliability coefficients. RESULTS: The knowledge part consisted of 30 items in nine areas, and its reliability was low (KR-20 =0.50). The correct answer rate was 71.8%. The performance section derived from the factor analysis was composed of two factors with nine items in the triage domain and three factors with 12 items in the non triage domain. The explanatory powers of these factors for the domains were 66.1% and 70.4%, respectively. The overall reliability (Cronbach's alpha) was .95, and the reliabilities for the two domains were .88 and .91, respectively. The nurses' mean performance level was 3.2(+/-0.45). CONCLUSION: The specific contents of the triage nursing work were identified from the developed scale; further research is necessary to in order to develop a scale capable of higher reliability and validity.
Emergencies* ; Emergency Service, Hospital* ; Nursing* ; Reproducibility of Results ; Triage*

PURPOSE: The purposes of this study were to develope and evaluate a constipation intervention program for inpatients. METHOD: To develope this program, Six phases were processed including the organization of team, the analysis of medical chart, the development of tentative constipation intervention program, the test of content validity, the test of clinical validity and the determination of final constipation intervention program. To evaluate the clinical validity of this program, 10 subjects who were in the C University Hospital were selected from March, 2001 to October, 2001. RESULT: The clinical validity was supplied by the pilot test, showing the potential effect of the program. Based on the validity results the final algorithm and the form of nursing record for this program which consist of the 3-step assessments and the intervention protocol were presented in this study. CONCLUSION: The advantage of this program is being able to assess and manage constipation simultaneously and is especially effective to patients who are at risk for developing constipation during their admission. Further study needs are also necessary to evaluate the effect of this program on the self-symptom of constipation.
Constipation* ; Humans ; Inpatients* ; Nursing Records ; Program Development

PURPOSE: This study was done to develop an instrument for measuring intellectual capital and assess its validity and reliability in identifying the components, human capital, structure capital and customer capital of intellectual capital in hospital nursing organizations. METHODS: The participants were 950 regular clinical nurses who had worked for over 13 months in 7 medical hospitals including 4 national university hospitals and 3 private university hospitals. The data were collected through a questionnaire survey done from July 2 to August 25, 2009. Data from 906 nurses were used for the final analysis. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Cronbach's alpha coefficients, item analysis, factor analysis (principal component analysis, Varimax rotation) with the SPSS PC+ 17.0 for Windows program. RESULTS: Developing the instrument for measuring intellectual capital in hospital nursing organizations involved a literature review, development of preliminary items, and verification of validity and reliability. The final instrument was in a self-report form on a 5-point Likert scale. There were 29 items on human capital (5 domains), 21 items on customer capital (4 domains), 26 items on structure capital (4 domains). CONCLUSION: The results of this study may be useful to assess the levels of intellectual capital of hospital nursing organizations.
Adult ; Delivery of Health Care/organization & administration ; Health Manpower/organization & administration ; Hospitals, University ; Humans ; Knowledge Management ; *Nursing Service, Hospital/organization & administration ; Nursing Staff, Hospital/psychology ; Principal Component Analysis ; Questionnaires ; Young Adult

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to explore the variation in perceptions about problem-based learning(PBL) according to the level of academic achievement and learning attitude in the nursing students of a junior college (3-year program). METHOD: Students (n=39) learned the respiratory and cardiac system with seven PBL packages and group-based learning for a semester in 2002. Students were asked to write reflective journals that focused on their learning perception after an experience with each learning package. A total of 208 journals were used for analysis. RESULT: Students positively perceived that PBL making them increase their sense of responsibility for learning and felt satisfaction with the learning process, and had a confidence in the use of clinical nursing interventions. On the other hand, they negatively perceived that PBL was a burden because it took more time than traditional learning tasks, and they experienced an anxiety about regular tests and felt conflicts and diffidences in the learning process. The negative perceptions were expressed more often from students with a low academic achievement and low learning attitude compared to others. CONCLUSION: Students perceived the PBL as effective in understanding the learning concepts in the clinical practice environment. PBL need to be supplemented by feedback-based lecture and facilitative strategies for academically low-achieved students.
Students, Nursing/*psychology ; *Problem-Based Learning ; Humans ; Female ; *Education, Nursing, Baccalaureate ; *Attitude ; Adult

OBJECTIVE: This study is conducted to develop web-based 'Evidence-Based Nursing(EBN)' education program about ventilator-patient care and to verify the effect of the web-based program on nurses' knowledge and learning motivation for study by comparing with existing nursing education program. METHODS: This study is quasi-experimental study by using nonequivalent control group pretest-posttest design. 42 newly hired nurses were recruited for participation of study from 4 intensive care units. Subjects were divided into 2 groups; 21 nurses in experiment group and another 21 nurses in control group. For developing and complementing of web-based EBN education program, instructional design model by Dick, Carey and Carey(2001) was used. Data was collected from July 26, 2004 to September 4, 2004. RESULTS: 1) 'Nurses who were on web-based EBN education program has higher knowledge to study than nurses who were on classroom lecture' was rejected due to no significant differences between experiment group and control group(F=.210, p=.649). 2) 'Nurses who were on web-based EBN education program has higher learning motivation to study than nurses who were on classroom lecture' was supported due to significantly higher on learning motivation in experiment group than in control group(t=2.445, p=.019). CONCLUSION: This program was useful for increasing the effectiveness of learning motivation of the nurses.
Complement System Proteins ; Education* ; Education, Nursing ; Evidence-Based Nursing* ; Intensive Care Units ; Learning* ; Motivation*

PURPOSE: This study was done to identify the effectiveness of CPR training for nurses in the 6-sigma course. METHOD: The participants were nurses and doctors who worked in the medical center. For data analysis, the SPSS/PC14.0 program was used. RESULT: The total 11 categories of the primary problems were revealed on the recognition of carrying out CPR by nurses and doctors. After understanding the nurses' CPR knowledge and the practical ability, the survey showed 14.97 points and 67.12 points. After the education, the scores were increased from 14.87 to 23.25 in knowledge and from 67.12 to 93.43 in practical ability. The 6-sigma problem was ended as worked up the management plan and understood the changes over the management improving team. CONCLUSION: This study carries an emphasis on understanding of various CPR performance problems applied with 6-sigma in ward. In addition, improvement activities in relation to policy of hospitals suggest the high possibilities that the application of the improvement activities could be extended into the entire hospitals.
Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation ; Lifting ; Statistics as Topic