Competency standards for critical care nurses: do they measure up?

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. Participants were sent a questionnaire and asked to describe on a 7-point Likert scale how closely each competency statement and related elements reflected their level of critical care nursing practice.