OBJECTIVE to develop and validate national competency standards for midwives in Australia. This study was part of a commissioned national research project to articulate the scope of practice of Australian midwives and to develop national competency standards to assist midwives to deliver safe and competent midwifery care. DESIGN a multi-method, staged approach was used to collect data through...

Robust selection processes are essential to ensure the best and most appropriate candidates for nursing, midwifery and allied health professional (NMAHP) positions are appointed, and subsequently enhance patient care. This article reports on a study that explored interviewers' and interviewees' experiences of using values and competency-based interview (VCBI) methods for NMAHPs. Results suggest...

Background and Purpose. Interprofes­ sional collaboration in health care is now considered a high priority, as concerns about patient safety, health and human resources shortages, and effective and ef­ ficient care have reached epic proportions. Although there are many models for in­ terprofessional education for collabora­ tive, patient-centered care, there is little in the literature to descr...

To the editor. Student pharmacists in countries where English is used for on-campus instruction but is not the national language may face difficulties when it comes to effectual communication with patients during experiential learning in clinical settings. Having effective communication skills is one of the traits of professionalism, and is not only one of the core competencies in becoming a be...

BACKGROUND Cultural Respect Encompassing Simulation Training (CREST) is a learning program that uses simulation to provide health professional students and practitioners with strategies to communicate sensitively with culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) patients. It consists of training modules with a cultural competency evaluation framework and CALD simulated patients to interact with...

BACKGROUND Increasing the cultural competence of physicians and other health care providers has been suggested as one mechanism for reducing health disparities by improving the quality of care across racial/ethnic groups. While cultural competency training for physicians is increasingly promoted, relatively few studies evaluating the impact of training have been published. METHODS We recruite...

BACKGROUND Cultural competency is a recognized and popular approach to improving the provision of health care to racial/ethnic minority groups in the community with the aim of reducing racial/ethnic health disparities. The aim of this systematic review of reviews is to gather and synthesize existing reviews of studies in the field to form a comprehensive understanding of the current evidence ba...

OBJECTIVE To determine the construct validity of the Australian College of Critical Care Nurses (ACCCN) competency standards as a tool for assessing the clinical practice of specialist level critical care nurses in Australia. DESIGN A comparative descriptive design was used to examine the relationship between the domains, competencies and elements of the ACCCN competency standards. Participan...