Competency-based education
Creating practice-ready healthcare professionals
Laerdal is joining professional organizations, advocacy groups and accrediting bodies in addressing the need to transform healthcare education through a commitment to fostering competency-based education. Competency-based education (CBE) seeks to ensure that learners are practice-ready to demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and attitudes expected of them as healthcare professionals in their respective future real-world environments.
The challenge
Need for practice-ready graduates
The lack of preparedness among healthcare professionals entering the workforce today is a significant challenge. In the United States, a study in 2017 revealed that only 23% of new graduate nurses were considered competent as novice RNs (Kavanagh & Szweda, 2017). By 2020, this trend worsened, with only 9% of new graduates demonstrating adequate competency (Kavanagh & Sharpnack, 2021).
With a projected global shortage of nearly 10 million health workers by 2030, there is a critical need for practice-ready graduates. Healthcare education is increasingly shifting towards Competency-Based Education (CBE) to address this issue.
THE OPPORTUNITY
Competency-based education
By working with our partners, we have a unique opportunity to support the transition to CBE in healthcare education. A principle of CBE requires educators to provide more opportunities for learners to demonstrate their knowledge in diverse care settings through simulation. To identify areas of improvement, educators and learners need timely individualized feedback, reports, and data from these learning experiences.
We can help empower healthcare professionals with the necessary skills and knowledge to meet the evolving demands of the industry. This includes creating interactive and immersive learning experiences, integrating simulation technologies, and providing comprehensive assessment tools. The implementation of CBE helps bridge the gap between theory and practice, leading to more competent and confident healthcare professionals.
Partner programs
Advancing nursing education
Our long-standing partner in nursing education, The National League for Nursing (NLN) supports competency-based education in nursing by emphasizing student empowerment and accountability. They advocate for ongoing assessment and feedback throughout the curriculum to ensure competence is maintained. The NLN also highlights the importance of using student-specific learning data to personalize progression and allow students to demonstrate multiple competencies through a single assessment method.
Simulation is going to be a very significant part of how students are able to demonstrate that they’re meeting their competencies through their actions.
- Jocelyn Ludlow, PhD, RN, CHSE, CNE, CMSRN
Simulation is the cornerstone of competency-based education
Competency-based learning require that individuals can practice multiple times and in multiple ways. Simulation based learning experiences challenge learners to move past knowledge acquisition and truly demonstrate clinical judgement and critical thinking in action. Simulators, task trainers and digital solutions will be critical in providing learning experiences for individuals to “put it all together.”
Data is key
Data can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of educational programs and interventions, ensuring that learners are acquiring the necessary skills and knowledge to succeed in their chosen fields. Valuable insights and evidence of learners' progress and achievements helps educators and institutions track individual and group performance, identify areas of improvement, and make data-informed decisions to enhance teaching and learning.
“The interesting thing about looking at simulation data is that we don’t guide them… that enables us to identify gaps and then close those gaps prior to graduation so that they can be safe and effective practitioners.“
- Christopher Garrison, PhD, RN, CNS, CHSE, Director, Associate Teaching Professor, Pennsylvania State University
Lifelong learning for healthcare professionals
By 2030, nearly 350 million people will be working to improve public health globally. Healthcare is vast and fast-moving, both as science and as practice.
As healthcare professionals enter their clinical careers, they do so on the premise that their foundational academic education is primarily a license to practice and that continuous, lifelong learning is required to deliver safe and effective treatment and care to their patients. In this way, the need for personal development aligns with the need of the healthcare institution.
