The paper reports one aspect of a larger national study of competency assessment in nursing. The overall aim of the larger project funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) was to develop a competency assessment tool for nursing eligibility to practice programmes in Australia. The phase of the study reported in this paper sought to identify the ‘skills’ that the nursing profession could reasonably expect of a newly graduating registered nurse in Australia.
At the commencement of the project there were 39 universities delivering eligibility to practice programmes in Australia, the majority of these (n = 23) were located in metropolitan cities across Australia’s states and territories. There were a wide range and number of skills taught in nursing curriculum and as a consequence it was clear that the skills covered with preregistration nursing students were not consistent across programmes (Brown et al 2015 [1]; Crookes and Brown 2010 [2]). Since the introduction of national accreditation in 2010 course accreditation processes have been carried out by the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Accreditation Council (ANMAC); however there is no agreed consensus on the skill set that nursing students should possess or be developing during their programme of study. There is also no agreed consensus on the skill set required by industry that new graduate nurses should possess in Australia. In the literature it is identified that there is an observed difference between what is expected of a new graduate (a ‘work ready’ registered nurse), even though it is not defined, and the apparent end product of nursing registration programmes