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Historically competency-based national frameworks of vocational qualifications were developed from industry standards as indicators to ensure minimum performance requirements were met (O'Connell et al. 2014; Stephenson 1998).
Clinical competence was conceived around the manual job market, where a high level of intelligence was not considered necessary, only skill proficiency, and workers were trained in performing such skills (Watson et al. 2002). The 1990's saw the nursing profession embrace competency standards and clinical competence; regulatory authorities measured practice and licensure against them, curricula was designed around them, and students were assessed against them (O'Connell et al. 2014).
Why competence is no longer applicable
However, for university nursing education, competence has a narrow perspective (Sasso et al. 2016), limited to the acquisition of knowledge and skills and fails to empower people to reach their full potential (Hase & Davis 1999). Competence is simplistic and prescriptive (O'Connell et al. 2014), where assessing workplace tasks is often reduced to a tick box of skills to achieve proficiency, and the evaluation tools present a 'reductionist' approach to the assessment (Girot 2000).
This is partly due to a lack of clarity around the terminology; competence, competent, competency, and competencies, and this ambiguity has produced a number of inconsistencies in assessment methods (Bromley 2014; Watson et al. 2002). "There continues to be no consensus on the definition of competence, [it is a] highly abstract phenomenon...complicated to assess and measure" (Flinkman et al. 2017, p1036)
From competence to capability
In June 2016 the Australian 'Competencies for Registered Nurses' were superseded by the 'NMBA Registered Nurse Standards for Practice', where Standard 3 indicates the registered nurse 'Maintains Capability for Practice' (Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia 2016).
Although the concept of graduate capability, has been gaining strength in the higher education sector,...