Formação em serviço e desenvolvimento profissional: desafios e constrangimentos no processo de desenvolvimento de competências dos enfermeiros

Dissertação mest., Ciências da educação - Educação e formação de adultos, Universidade do Algarve, 2008In nursing, quality care depends on good standards of knowledge and performance, showed by professionals ‘competence. Bearing in mind the important role that inservice/ continuous training must play in knowledge and competencies development, we carried out a study in order to answer to the following questions: What is the contribution of the in service training in nurses’ competence development? Does the current in-service training model influences that process and which difficulties may influence nurses’ competence development? We adopted a characteristic methodology used in the exploratory studies. Result analysis allowed us to conclude that the in-service training model used contributes to the development of nurses’ knowledge and competencies. Sharing knowledge and experiences between team members, mostly, the ones with longer professional experience, the existence of updated protocols in the work contexts and the reflection about the professional activities among the colleagues are the elements with a more positive contribute on that process. On the other side, the main difficulties are: the substitution of the less experienced colleagues by others with more nursing experience, instead of teaching them, and the method by «attempt and error». The in-service training model has limitations, since the training moments should be based on a reflexive work; also, these moments should allow sharing issues such as: the difficulties felted in the daily work, relational problems and nurses performance and practice. In service training must demonstrate a reflexive professional practice; as an example of adult education, the learning is directly connected with the experience