Relationships between Practical Competence and Reflection Skill/Experience of Japanese PHNs

Background:

This study aimed to identify any relationships between the practical competence and reflection skill/experience of public health nurses in order to demonstrate that quality experience entailing reflection helps to improve their practical competence.

Methods:

The study covered half of the public health nurses (“PHNs”) working in five prefectures in western Japan, or 1,191 PHNs selected through systematic sampling. We conducted an anonymous survey by distributing self-administered questionnaires by mail. The questions were Reflection Skill Scale (“RSS”), three scales to measure the practical competence of the PHN, and experiences to develop community health programs as PHN that required extra effort.

Results:

505 responses were valid for analysis (42.4%).

(1)      The respondents with higher RSS scores also had significantly higher practical competence scores than those with lower RSS scores (p<0.05).

(2)      The respondents with effort-requiring experience in “development of community health programs” had significantly higher RSS scores than those without any such experience (p<0.05).

(3)      The coefficient of correlation between the years of experience/job title (six classes) and the RSS score was 0.026 (Pearson) and 0.006 (Kendall), respectively, indicating very little correlation.

Conclusion:

Our study found that practical competence may be a function of reflection skill, which is unrelated to the years of experience or job title. Our findings also imply that reflection skill may be developed through effort-requiring experiences. Thus, it is suggested that the practical competence of a PHN depends not only on the years (quantity) of experience, but also on the quality of experience entailing reflective thinking.