Current demand of nursing competency in China

With the economic expansion and life style alteration in China recent years, hospital employers are demanding qualified and competent nurses to provide high-quality clinical care. However, nursing education in China tends not to reflect the changing demands in the hospital nursing environment in time into the program curriculum; partially due to the lack of information on health care employers' demand on nursing competencies. We aimed to investigate the current demand of nurses' competencies from health care institutions regarding all educational background in China. employers from 396 medical institutions of 17 provinces, including 164 secondary hospitals and 59 tertiary hospitals and 173 rehabilitation centers were invited to a survey using a pre-validated instrument on a five-point Likert scale (1-never required, 2= not required, 3= neutral, 4= required, 5-extremely required). The demand on main core competences components by health care employers were found to be as follows: clinical care (scored 4.94 +/- 0.23), teaching-coaching (scored 4.83 +/- 0.38), critical thinking and research aptitude (scored 4.81 +/- 0.43), interpersonal relationships (IPR, scored 4.76 +/- 0.43), professional-development (scored 4.67 +/- 0.47), legal/ethical practice (scored 4.25 +/- 0.55) and leadership (scored 3.86 +/- 0.74). Most of the demand for nursing expertise still focused on major departments such as department of Internal medicine, surgical department and OBGYN, the total of which accounted for 50%-60%. The departments generally required less nursing staff exhibited an overall increase of the demand over the years such as department of imaging and department of geriatrics. Our results are not only indicative for Chinese nursing educators but might also be helpful for other developing countries facing society aging problem and rapid economy booming.