A cross-sectional survey on nurses in burn departments: Core competencies and influencing factors.

Abstract

Nurses of burn departments play a vital role in caring for and rehabilitating burn patients. However, the situation of nurses in burn departments is seldomly reported. The current study aims to identify the status and influencing factors of nurses in burn departments' core competencies nationwide. This is a cross-sectional and multicenter study. Purposive sampling was used to recruit registered nurses who worked in burn departments of 12 tertiary hospitals in Mainland China. We issued an online survey including structured questionnaires consisting of socio-demographic information and the Self-rating Scale for Core Competencies. Totally 267 nurses in burn departments participated in our study. The mean score of nurses in burn departments' core competencies was (3.81 ± 0.53), with a scoring rate of 76.22%. Professional title, length of employment and experiences in burn intensive care units (BICUs) were influencing factors of NBDs' core competencies (P < 0.05), explaining 21.0% of the total variance. Our findings indicate that the core competencies of nurses in burn departments were at a moderate level generally. Moreover, this study highlights that nursing administrators and educators should promote the specialized knowledge and skills, teaching skills and critical thinking of nurses in burn departments.