title: Measuring Registered Nurses' Medication Competence in Specialty Settings: An Operating Room Registered Nurse Example.
abstract: Nursing professional development practitioners play an active, vital role in shaping, implementing, and evaluating competency models in their organizations. This article describes a process for developing and continuously improving knowledge assessment examinations, one component of a competency model. The article defends the use of specialty-specific medication knowledge assessment examinations. The authors recommend future investigations to link nurses' knowledge assessment results to performance in practice and to analyze costs and benefits of knowledge assessment examinations.
authors.affiliation: Karen Siroky, MSN, BSN, RN-BC, is Senior Director, Clinical Programs, AMN Healthcare, Inc, San Diego, California. Bette Case Di Leonardi, PhD, MSN, BSN, RN-BC, is Independent Consultant, Consultant to AMN Healthcare, Inc, Chicago, Illinois.
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Siroky
authors.forename: Bette Case
authors.initials: BC
authors.lastname: Di Leonardi
mesh_terms: D019985:Benchmarking / Q000191:economics; D002140:California; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D006801:Humans; D007087:Illinois; D007318:Inservice Training; D009726:Nurses; D009730:Nursing Assessment; D009871:Operating Room Nursing / Q000193:education / Q000458:organization & administration; D057184:Practice Patterns, Nurses'