Population health contains core content and skills for nurses practicing in today’s environment, across care settings

Population health competencies have not been measured in nursing students

An unfolding Case Study was developed to measure select Population Health competencies

The Case Study was pilot tested with a sample of AACN member schools

The Case Study was demonstrated to be a reliable way of measuring core Population Health competencies

Additional Case Studies, with larger numbers of items, are needed for measuring competencies in BSN students

Nurses have a long history of practice in public health. More recently basic population health knowledge and skills are being required across all nursing practice settings. To prepare nurses for this practice nursing education has long included public or community health nursing (PHN) content and skills as part of prelicensure education at the baccalaureate level and above. However, little work has been done to document student competency in these areas. Competency-based education is a process whereby students are held accountable for the mastery of knowledge and skills deemed critical for an area of study. The AACN Public/Population Health Workgroup addressed the challenge of measuring baccalaureate student nursing competencies in population health by developing an unfolding case study, with embedded questions assessing selected competencies. Lacking established population health competencies in nursing curriculum at the time of this work but wanting to assess students' basic competencies across the care continuum, the Workgroup selected relevant competencies from the Council of Public Health Nursing Organizations (formerly called the Quad Council) Competencies for Public Health Nurses. Utilizing these selected competencies, the Workgroup devised the unfolding case study and piloted it with 275 baccalaureate nursing education programs across the country. The findings from the Pilot demonstrated nursing student competency achievement and how this achievement changed as students progressed through the curriculum. The authors report implications and recommendations for competency measurement in population health based on the results of the pilot.

Public health nursing

Community health nursing

Population health

Competency-based education

Competency measurement

Nursing education

© 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.