Nursing students’ conceptions of competence and the learning processes that support the development of competence: a phenomenographic study

The development of competence among student nurses is important to nurse educators, nursing regulatory bodies, employers and patients. Several teaching and learning strategies support the development of competence among student nurses, but the level of competence at the point of graduation remains below expected standards. Therefore, more research is needed to find strategies that can enhance the development of competence among students. The study explored students’ conceptions of competence and the learning processes that support the development of competence in nursing practice. Gaining an understanding of learning and competence from the student’s perspective can improve our current understanding of the development of competence. Utilising a phenomenographic approach, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions were conducted among purposively sampled groups of nursing students. The analysis of data was managed through ATLAS. ti 8.1 and followed the process of familiarisation, condensation, comparison, grouping, articulating labelling and contrasting of excerpts to generate the students’ conceptions of learning. Five categories of description emerged and showed that the development of competence involves students increasing their understanding of what competence is, hence changing their learning strategies to meet the level of competence, as they understood it. In order of hierarchy from the lowest, the categories of description were: competence is understood as task completion; competence is understood as passing assessments /satisfying facilitators; competence is understood as applying theory to practice; competence is understood as performance of nursing according to clinical standards/guidelines; and competence is understood as performance that yields positive health outcomes.