Abstract:

Objective: Public health nurses should provide professional health services in line with their competences in public health nursing when undertaking interventions. These qualifications include the knowledge, skills, judgment and qualifications necessary to make safe and ethical practice. In this study, it was aimed at determining the public health nursing competencies of nursing students at graduation stage. The universe of the research carried out as descriptive was the students at the graduation stage who took the course of public health nursing. All students who accepted to participate in the study were voluntarily included in the study and participation rate was 87.6%. The data of the study was collected with a condition diagnosis form consisting of 83 questions. The qualifications discussed in the form as 4 main headings; evaluation of society, community-based planning, implementation of nursing interventions, evaluation of processes and outputs. Descriptive statistics were used in the evaluation of the data. In order to conduct the research, the permission of the institution, the approval of the ethics committee and informed consent were obtained from the students. Results: 87.7% of the students are women and 59.6% are 22 years old. The highest item score average in the field of evaluation of society "I can ensure the confidentiality of individual and family data (3.84±0.41)", in the field of community-based planning "I comply with ethical principles when choosing initiatives (3.71±0.58)" and "I respect ethnic beliefs and culture (3.71±0.57)". The lowest average score in the field of implementation of nursing interventions was determined as "I can identify symptomatic disease states in the community or individuals with unrecognized health risk factors (3.38±0.65)". In the field of evaluation of processes and outputs the lowest average score was "I use appropriate statistics to analyze the collected information (3.33±0.71)". Conclusions: Most of the public health nursing qualifications of nurses at graduation stage were found to be high. In order to further develop public health nursing qualifications, it may be suggested to make arrangements in undergraduate education programs and to support nurses with in-service training programs after graduation.

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