Community Health Nurses Association of Canada (CHNAC)

 

Survey Results Regarding Member Perception About

Canadian Nurses Association's Certification Process

 

The Community Health Nursing (CHN) Certification Examination evaluation was supported by CHNAC through funding from PHAC. Approximately 210 nurses wrote the certification examinations in 2006 and 2007. This evaluation was the first evaluation to assess CNA certification. Two phases to the evaluation were proposed by CHNAC:

Phase I: To explore the appropriation or uptake of information from NurseONE and ICT in the nursing students’ learning / practice;

Phase II: To determine the appropriateness of NurseONE and ICT in the students’ academic environment and beginning practitioners’ clinical practice;

 

The evaluation was designed to begin to look at the impact of certification on practice, recognizing that the time span between certification and evaluation is short (within 2 years), therefore change in practice cannot be adequately assessed at this point.

 

In 2007, CHNAC conducted a literature review to inform the rationale and information about the facilitators and barriers related to the process of certification and the certification examination. This literature review was initiated, monitored, and endorsed by the Certification, Standards and Competency Standing Committee of CHNAC and shared with the researchers. This committee acted as the advisory steering group for the evaluation work.

 

With the assistance of an undergraduate nursing student, the literature review was updated and themes related to facilitators and barriers to preparing and writing certification exams were identified. These themes were used as the basis for the development of the evaluation survey.

 

Following several meetings to discuss the evaluation process and the content of the survey, members of the Committee reviewed the survey questions for clarity and ensured that the questions would elicit the answers/information needed by the Committee to make further changes to the certification process. Revisions were made to the survey based on Committee feedback. The CHNAC agreed that a paper survey would be appropriate to send out to members and names and mailing addresses were obtained from CNA. Only those nurses who had agreed to share their contact information were sent a survey. Ethics approval was granted by the Research Office at the University of Saskatchewan. In addition to the survey and an information letter, a cover letter from the CHNAC President, which outlined the importance of the completion of the survey, was sent to participants. Results of the evaluation are available from CHNAC. An article will be published shortly on the results of the evaluation.