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Emotional competencies in geriatric nursing: empirical evidence from a computer based large scale assessment calibration study

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Abstract

The care of older people was described as involving substantial emotion-related affordances. Scholars in vocational training and nursing disagree whether emotion-related skills could be conceptualized and assessed as a professional competence. Studies on emotion work and empathy regularly neglect the multidimensionality of these phenomena and their relation to the care process, and are rarely conclusive with respect to nursing behavior in practice. To test the status of emotion-related skills as a facet of client-directed geriatric nursing competence, 402 final-year nursing students from 24 German schools responded to a 62-item computer-based test. 14 items were developed to represent emotion-related affordances. Multi-dimensional IRT modeling was employed to assess a potential subdomain structure. Emotion-related test items did not form a separate subdomain, and were found to be discriminating across the whole competence continuum. Tasks concerning emotion work and empathy are reliable indicators for various levels of client-directed nursing competence. Claims for a distinct emotion-related competence in geriatric nursing, however, appear excessive with a process-oriented perspective.

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Acknowledgments

This research has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (01DB1111). We are indebted to our consortium partners from the Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training (f-bb, Ottmar Döring), Bamberg University (Eveline Wittmann) and Bielefeld University of Applied Science (Ulrike Weyland, Annette Nauerth) for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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  1. Department of Educational Quality and Assessment, German Institute for International Educational Research, Schloßstraße 29, 60486, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Roman Kaspar & Johannes Hartig

  2. Interdisciplinary Ageing Research, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Roman Kaspar

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Correspondence to Roman Kaspar.

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Kaspar, R., Hartig, J. Emotional competencies in geriatric nursing: empirical evidence from a computer based large scale assessment calibration study. Adv in Health Sci Educ 21, 105–119 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-015-9616-y

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