The Concepts of Competency - Self-Assessment and Self-Regulation

Question: How does improving your skills with an e-portfolio link to the concepts of competency, self-assessment and self-regulation? Answer: Introduction Nurses should maintain their professional portfolio which represents their professional knowledge, development in their skills over the past time, their competencies, and marketing skills, when applying for new jobs in nursing or for higher position opportunity. In new emerging technology, a new learning tool is launched for nurses called e-portfolio. The e - Portfolio is an online curriculum vitae that is a simple paper transformed information to an electronic form for online use. E-portfolio consist of scanned documents related to nursing, their achievements, experience certificate and other employment records. These documents are seen by the hiring committees, managers, and by nursing regulatory bodies. e-Portfolio The word is derived from Italian word Portare means to carry and Foglio means leaf or sheet (Meister et al. 2002. Portfolios are different from resumes or CV. Portfolio of a nursing professional show evidences related to nursing skills, their knowledge and his/ her core competencies. These portfolios were used to apply for new job, carrier promotions, reviewing of nurse qualification and for preparing performance chart. Portfolios have useful information which were arranged in orderly fashion, for reviewing by others. But now these were portfolios converted to e- portfolio, which contain all this information, but in electronic form for an online use (Oermann 2002). Concept of competency Competencies for professional nursing should reflect the multifaceted nature of nursing practice, carrying out assessment and broad scope of skills. Portfolio assessment can enhance learning, however, its purpose to measure competence is not strongly established (McCready 2006). The ANMC 2005 define Competency is a bunch of technical knowledge, skills related to nursing practice, merit and personality which one is reflected in his/ her performance chart. Competence can be cannot be recuperate if knowledge and skills are not maintained. (Storey and Haigh 2002). A number of tools have been developed for judging competence in nursing, but none shows empirical results (EDCAN 2008). Patient outcome, peer assessment, self-appraisal, and continuing education are some of the indicators which can be applied to assess competency. Self-assessment Self-assessment helps in shaping up nursing career. It defines goals and give direction, in which nurses should work seriously in order to achieve success in their profession. Nursing schools should plan their courses to meet self - assessment objectives. To meet this goal, teachers should give the assessment task to students, which help nursing professionals in achieving successful learning results. E-portfolios help nursing professionals to state aim and goals in their career. (Stefani et al. 2007) (Bhattacharya and Harnett 2007; Robles and Braathen 2002). Self-regulation Self- regulation is a part of the nurse regulatory body. The work of these regulatory bodies is to focus on safety and proper care of the public, which they received from registered qualified nurses. Self- regulation determines that profession met standards of education and practice according to a code of ethics for registered nurses. Self-regulation works by practicing nursing according to regulatory bodies and sharing their expertise in the development of a code of ethics and nursing standards. Self-regulation is important in nursing in the interest of public trust. Nurses tethered to their standards and code of ethics. When nurses work according to their standards and regulatory bodies, they gain respect and trust of people. Conclusion Nurses should improve their skills with an e - portfolio link by self- assessment, competence and self- regulation concept. These concepts help nurses in staying ahead in their profession and gaining growth and development. These skills help in development of nurse personality and in emerging out effective e-portfolio. An e portfolio is a representation of nurses scanned documents, achievements, proof of their skills, experience certificate, reviews, professional growth graph, developed skills and knowledge related to their work. Recorded e- portfolio information used by nurses and other hiring managers, nursing registration board and employers for job selection and grading them. By this information nurses can develop their skills, increase knowledge and can do self-assessment about, why they are lacking behind in career, what measures should be taken to improve their knowledge and skill, and what are their core competencies. References 1. 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