Professional Competency in Nursing

Competency is the knowledge, skills, ability and behaviors or capacities that a person possesses in order to perform tasks correctly and skillfully. Competency is an important criterion for nurses. There is no consensus on common definition of competency in nursing because of its multidimensional nature. Scientific innovations and technological developments require nurses to adapt to these conditions, to serve increasingly demanding patient groups, to work together with different disciplines, and to coordinate many services. Today, while the necessity of adaptation of nurses to the changing structure of healthcare services brings the concept of competency to the agenda, it is emphasized that developing competency is not easy. It is stated that knowing the qualifications determining the competency and the variables affecting it, building a competency development program based on the cooperation of the school and hospital administrations including the nurses starting from undergraduate education can contribute to developing competence. In this article, it is aimed to contribute to meeting the needs of managers and nurses about the subject by examining the literature about developing competency in nursing.