Revista de Práticas Avançadas em Enfermagem

Aim: The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of the concept of competence of nurses and examine how competence is currently measured.
Background: Nurse Education curricula have adopted a competency based model without clear and unequivocal understanding of the meaning of competence. Competence is reported to be developed incrementally and individually situated in a binary definition, these two positions have lead to confusion within nursing practice and nurse education.
Method: A literature search was conducted using various databases, including CINAHL, MEDLINE, OVID, Psych info and The Cochrane Library between 1980 and 2006. The purposes of the concept analysis are: 1) to establish a better understanding of the concept of competence as applied to nursing practice and nurse education, and 2) provide the impetus to explore empirically the competence based methods of learning in nursing education. Concept analysis described by Walker and Avant was used to examine the concept of competence.
Findings: The use of concept analysis resulted in the identification of four critical attributes in relation to the concept of competence as applied to nursing practice. The concept analysis revealed difficulty in identifying a clear meaning of the constituents of competence and the definitions assigned to a competent nurse. The four critical attributes were 'state of being', 'condition of being capable', 'sufficient for the purpose' and 'required ability'.
Conclusion: This paper provides an explanation of competence in relation to nursing practice. This explanation identifies that a nurse can be competent when the nurse is fit, adequately qualified, has the required ability, is safe to practice, capable and can function independently and proficiently as a registered practitioner.

The number of overweight or obese persons is increasing in every country, and will probably not decline in the near future. Overweight obese persons have to face discriminatory attitude in the society as well as in healthcare centers, which affects their psychology as well as health. Many obese as well as normal weight people are unaware that this fat-shaming is wrong and should be stopped. Some healthcare providers believe that fat-shaming their obese patients will motivate them to lose weight. However, the mental anguish produced by such fat-shaming may compel such people to eat more, thus aggravating the problem. There is an urgent need to make the society and healthcare workers realize the ill-effects of the anti-fat bias so that such people may be treated with the empathy and respect that is the right of all human beings.