الفهرس 
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Abstract
SUMMARY
Nowadays, higher education institutions are faced with highly competitive changes, some of these changes have resulted from multiple events including, increasing global competition, introducing of new technology and introducing quality in education to meet students and market’s needs. As a matter of fact, all of these can put a strong pressure on educational institutions to constantly think about the present and future needs of the society for improving the quality of their education and services offered.
Therefore nursing education has traditionally focused on achieving statutory competencies by emphasizing theoretical content and skills acquisition in order to adequately prepare student nurses. So, nurse could be considered competent when he/she consistently demonstrates the ability to transfer scientific knowledge from social, biological and physical sciences in applying the nursing process. BSN graduates have unique skills to their work as they play an important role in the delivery of safe patient care. They have abilities to help lowering patient mortality and failure to rescue rates in hospital settings.Also they have higher critical thinking skills, confidence, maturity, and open-mindedness. from this importance one can deduce that BSN education associated with better patient outcomes.
The word competency comes from a Latin word meaning “suitable”. Competence is a holistic term that refers to one’s overall capacity or ability to do something successfully .Nursing professional competence defined as “the habitual and judicious use of communication, knowledge, technical skills, clinical reasoning, emotions, values, and reflection in daily practice for the benefit of the individuals and community being served. In this respect, nurse competence seems to be based on three parts: nursing skills, attitudes and values as well as knowledge. According to key criteria in defining nursing competence we can conclude that competence has a visible part (knowledge and skills) and a hidden part (attitudes).
Therefore, assessing levels of nursing graduate competenceto determine progression and educational achievements among nursing students, as well as ensuring effective and competent professional nursing skills provided to nursing students before graduation.
Aim of the study:
The current study was carried out to assess the level of professional competencies among Baccalaureate degree nursing graduates: using self -report
Setting of the study:
The study was conducted at Alexandria Main University Hospital at the departments in which the student interns are enrolled. These departments include neurology intensive care unit, burn intensive care, unit I- unit III, triage care unit, anesthesia intensive care unit and cardiology intensive care unit.
Subjects:
The subjects of the study included:
Baccalaureate degree nursing graduates of academic year 2015- 2016 and already allocated to their department in internship year. The total number of graduates of academic year 2015- 2016 were220 graduates. Therefore the sample size of nursing graduates was determined by using EPI Info 7 program applying the following information. Population size =220, Expected frequency =50%, Acceptable error =5%, Confidence coefficient =95%, Sample size =140
The sample size of baccalaureate degree nursing graduates was one hundred forty nursing graduates (n=140).The study subjects was randomly selected according to their allocation in intern program in the pre mentioned departments ,all the available graduates and ready to participate in the study during the morning shift were selected .
Tools of the study:
The data of the present study was collected using one tool
The Nursing Professional Competence (NPC) Scale
Nursing Professional Competence Scale was developed by Nilsson et al 2014(14). The NPC Scale has an international applicability. This scale was adapted to suit National Academic Reference Standards (NARS) and curricular intended learning outcomes adopted by Faculty of Nursing Alexandria University. As the following NPC was revised and matched to the intended learning outcomes of undergraduate program specification.
The items of the NPC scale comprises eight sub-scales of competence subscale Nursing care, Value-based nursing care, Medical technical care, Teaching and learning and support, Documentation and information technology, Legislation in nursing and safety planning,Leadership in and development of nursing and Professionalism.
Those eight sub-scales constitutes two overarching themes Patient-related nursing (Theme 1) and nursing care organization and development (Theme 2).
All items were measured on four point likert scale with response alternatives ranging from1 = to a very low degree, 2 = to a relatively low degree, 3 = to a relatively high degree and 4 = to a very high degree.
Moreover, the graduates were asked about the overall quality of BSN program by the following 3 questions:
To what extent do you perceive that the theoretical courses within the BSN have contributed to your acquisition of the formal competence requirements to be a professional nurse?
To what extent do you perceive that the clinical courses within the BSN have contributed to your acquisition of the formal competence requirements to be a professional nurse.
Additionally, the third question in form of graduaterecommendations for acquiring maximum competencies from the program as follow: What are your recommendations for achieving maximum competencies from the BSN program?
Method
1- Official permissions were obtained from the responsible authorities of the Faculty of Nursing, Alexandria University. These included the written approval obtained from the Dean Faculty of Nursing, Alexandria University faculty vice dean for community service and environment development to collect the necessary data.
2- Tool was modified to suite national academic reference standards and curricular intended learning outcomes adopted by the faculty.
3- Validity of the tool was reviewed by five experts from the Faculty of Nursing; Alexandria University (Appendix IV). They were asked to judge competencies and accuracy to ensure content validity then the necessary modifications were made. These modifications were: deletion of repeated items and translation of difficult words.
4- A pilot study was carried out on 10% of total study subjects (14) nursing graduate (excluded from the study) and necessary modification was done.
5- Tool was tested for reliability using the Crombach’s α coefficient to measure the internal consistency of the items. The Crombach’s α reliability value for nursing professional competence scale was .995ى
Data collection:
The researcher started the actual data collection by meeting the graduates on individual or small group basis. Groups ranging from one to 4 graduates (according to the number of study subjects present in departments). All study subjects were given the same instructions and were asked to read questions carefully before giving their responses. And they were asked to answer all questions. The researcher distributed the tool, the duration to complete NPCS ranged from 15 to 20 minutes.
Results of the present study showed that:
1- About two thirds of the nursing graduates reported their overall level of nurse competence as good .
2- The two highest mean score of the studied nursing graduates were Value based nursing care subscale and Medical and technical care subscale.
3- The lowest mean score was for leadership in and development of nursing profession.
4- More than one third of the nursing graduates reported their level of competence as very good in value based - nursing caresubscale.
5- More than two thirds of nursing graduatesreported their level of competence as good in Documentation and information technology subscale also more than half of them reported their level of competence as good in nursing care subscale.