Primary health care is the first level of personal out-of-hospital medical services. It provides affordable, continuous care based on considering biopsychosocial aspects and human characteristics to meet health-related needs throughout life. Primary health care professionals work with patients and their families to meet their immediate and long-term health needs. They apply an approach to influence broad determinants of health and interrelated aspects affecting physical, mental, and social well-being.
Nurses play a crucial role in primary health care, expanding, connecting, and coordinating care. The training received, and the work carried out by them allow them to occupy an important place in providing safe and full-fledged assistance in disease prevention, diagnosis, treatment, management, and rehabilitation of patients (Fitzgerald et al., 2020). The work of a nurse requires her to constantly improve her qualifications, improve and expand the professional competencies necessary to perform a large number of functional duties. In particular, using assessment strategies to teach students in classrooms, laboratories effectively and clinical settings plays an important role.
Professional competence is a characteristic that reflects their business and personal qualities, the level of knowledge, skills, and experience necessary for the implementation of scientifically based nursing care. The professional competencies help them carry out nursing care more efficiently based on mercy and tolerance. In addition, a nurse should focus on solving priority tasks and use modern technologies and skills (Fitzgerald et al., 2020). A nurse’s participation in diagnostic and rehabilitation processes is possible only if she has specific professional competencies, one of which is evaluation strategies.
Nursing teachers should provide graduates with a system of integrated theoretical and clinical knowledge, skills, and abilities. In addition, they should help master the world’s high medical technologies and form the capacity for social adaptation of nurses. The implementation of these tasks contributes to the holistic training of nursing teachers based on a solid motivational attitude, deep specialization, and actualization of students’ intellectual and personal capabilities (Fitzgerald et al., 2020). Nursing teachers are educators with specific functions, working conditions and methods, qualifications, and unique characteristics. The competence of a medical teacher is primarily determined by the qualities they have, which give originality to their communication with students, select the speed and degree of mastery of various skills.
In addition, it should be noted that a nursing teacher is also a scientist. The following personal qualities can be considered necessary for a scientist:
- spontaneous curiosity;
- a growing interest in scientific success in other fields of research;
- scientific endurance;
- self-demanding;
- discipline, striving for accuracy of results;
- enthusiasm and diligence in work;
- criticality and self-criticism;
- ability to get along with people (Fitzgerald et al., 2020).
The predominant features of a nurse teacher are purposefulness, perseverance, patience, tolerance, the ability to facilitate, initiative, and a creative approach to solving each task of education. Socio-personal and general cultural competencies consist in:
- the understanding the high social significance and responsibility of the profession of a nurse teacher as a representative of the intellectual elite of society, having a high motivation to perform professional activities.
- the ability to constantly improve and develop their intellectual and general cultural level, readiness to improve their qualifications and skills.
- the ability to manage the student team and form a favorable socio-psychological climate in the study group (Fitzgerald et al., 2020).
The professional competence of a nursing teacher as a whole is an open synergetic system, the components of which can be changed or added in connection with the development of pedagogical science. The educator of nurses is obliged to conduct educational and systematic work, which improves their professional qualifications and pedagogical skills. Only a teacher with professional and general competencies will prepare a graduate for skilled activity and contribute to the formation of their personal qualities and prepare them for self-development and self-education.
References
Fitzgerald, A., McNelis, A. M., & Billings, D. M. (2020). NLN core competencies for nurse educators: are they present in the course descriptions of academic nurse educator programs?. Nursing education perspectives, 41(1), 4-9.