Nursing QSEN Assignment

The nursing students are working on an assignment related to QSEN competencies and seem to have a very poor understanding of what QSEN competencies are. There are 6 competencies outlined in the article "Quality and Safety Education for Nurses," along with the "Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes" required for each competency. The competencies are:

patient-centered care
teamwork and collaboration
evidence-based practice
quality improvement
safety
informatics

My understanding of the assignment is that they are being asked to consider a situation they encounter in their clinical and then evaluate it in terms of one or more of the competencies and find related research. The first students that approached me about this said, "We want to do diabetes." You can imagine how successful that reference interaction was. If you get students at the desk asking about this assignment, I would suggest making sure they have the assignment sheet out and understand what they are being asked to do, and also that they understand what QSEN means. If they haven't gotten that far yet, they aren't ready to start on the assignment.

The article that serves as the basis for the assignment, which apparently they were not assigned to read (at least not yet) is in Science Direct . The competency charts are available at http://www.qsen.org/ksas_prelicensure.php#evidence-based_practice.