Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #107380

Beth F. Lamanna, WHNP, MPH, RN¹, Janet Place, MPH², Rebecca Whitley, MPH, BSN³, Sharon F. Mallette, BSN, MPH, FNPC⁴, and Monica Parker, RN, MS, CDE⁴. (1) Dep. of Community Health, School of Nursing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB# 7460, Carrington Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7460, 919-843-4685, lamanna@email.unc.edu, (2) Southeast Public Heatlh Training Center, North Carolina Insitute for Public Health, 400 Roberson Street, Carrboro, NC 27599-8165, (3) School of Nursing, East Carolina University, Rivers Building Room 236, Greenville, NC 27834, (4) School of Nursing: Department of Family and Community Nursing, East Carolina University, Rivers Building, Greenville, NC 27858-4353

The purpose of this session is to describe how North Carolina public health nurses adopted and then implemented the use of the Quad Council Public Health Nurse Competencies in practice. The state of North Carolina has a highly decentralized, county administered system of public health, creating the need for standardization in practice and collaboration between practice and education. In December 2004, the North Carolina Association of Public Health Nurse Administrators (NCAPHNA) unanimously adopted the eight domains of competencies developed by the Quad Council from the Council on Linkages Competencies. The public health administrators, while expressing support for the use of the competencies found them to be unwieldy in their current format and requested that the Committee for Practice and Education (COPE) develop guidelines for implementation. Based on these competencies, the COPE committee is developing a framework to educate public health nurses, create job descriptions and create performance evaluations, thereby guiding the implementation of competencies. In order to ensure baseline preparation for public health practice, an educational model has been piloted at the University level.

Learning Objectives:

• " Describe the group process used to analyze existing competency tools
• " Share documentation tools and methods for adapting these tools for other sites
• " Explore dissemination opportunities for the tools
• " Discuss educational model for PHN preparation
• " Identify learning needs of the various levels of PHNs

Keywords: Competency, Public Health Nursing

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.