3
Educare

Educare

JUNIO 2009 N° 6 Volumen 7

Generic competencies valued by nursing students

Section: TEACHING TO LEARN

Authors

Javier Velasco Laiseca, María José Alemany Anchel

Position

Profesores de la Escuela Universitaria de Enfermería “La Fe”, Valencia.

Contact email: Velasco_jav@gva.es

Abstract

The present descriptive, cross-sectional study aims to determine and analyse the opinion of nursing students at a nursing school regarding generic competences at three levels: 1) the importance these competencies have for their future career development; 2) the extent to which students consider these competencies are practiced in their core curriculum; and 3) the extent to which the students think they have mastered them. At a second stage of the study, variations in opinion are analysed depending on the year the student is in. The material used is a 30 item questionnaire with Likert-type answers. The Cronbach Alpha tool was used to determine the internal consistency of the questionnaire. Central tendency (means) and dispersion measures (standard deviation) were analysed. Finally, the Student t test was used to compare the mean scores obtained by the different student academic years. The results obtained indicate an excellent internal consistency of the questionnaire, a high appraisal of the importance of generic competences for the future professional development and a significant progress among the appraisals carried out by third year students  as compared to first year students.

Keywords:

generic skills; nursing studentsEuropean area higher education

Versión en Español

Título:

Las competencias genéricas valoradas por l@s alumn@s de Enfermería