By Nancy Claflin DNP, MS, RN, NEA-BC, CENP, CCRN-K, CPHQ, FNAHQ

Did you know that NOVA provides help to members with your proficiency input? If you are seeking advancement within Nurse I, or promotion to Nurse II or Nurse III, it’s important to provide examples of your accomplishments that meet the criteria in each dimension of nursing practice. This can include practice, professional development, collaboration, and scientific inquiry. 

When seeking a promotion, you need to demonstrate that you have improved the effectiveness of patient care through the use of increasingly complex skills while applying evidence-based knowledge to your nursing practice. You must also show that you have accepted greater responsibility for improving patient care while making steady progress toward achieving your professional goals that lead to improved care. In addition, you must demonstrate that your nursing practice meets the qualification standards for the grade that you are seeking.

There are different distinctions in the levels of nursing practice that must be shown through your proficiency input. This should identify any issues that have been addressed, spelling out what was done and why, for whom you took action, and finally a measurable outcome that was achieved. As a Nurse I, you are working on individual growth and development in clinical practice and becoming increasingly self-directed. You provide care to complex patients, set goals, and manage unique patient situations, including emergencies.

When you are working at a Nurse II level, you are now focusing on the unit, team, and/or workgroup contributions - what you can do together, and how you can demonstrate leadership. This means that for Nurse II, you need to be able to show how you have worked with the unit to solve problems and improve patient care. You need to be able to show that you can identify a problem, analyze it, and implement interventions to resolve it with team or unit colleagues. At a Nurse II level, you take on leadership roles, including charge nurse.

When you are working at a Nurse III level, you are demonstrating leadership that results in improved outcomes at a program or service level, something that impacts more than one unit or one team - your nursing practice affects programs, services, or an entire facility. You are able to clearly demonstrate improved outcomes for groups of patients, not just individuals. You also demonstrate leadership, actively leading groups and implementing evidence-based changes to improve care.

Meeting all of the elements for each of the criteria requires demonstrating each step in the process that you completed with examples, along with reporting measurable outcomes. For example, as part of meeting the practice criteria, you need to demonstrate the use of the nursing process, including assessment, diagnosis, outcome identification, planning, implementation, and evaluation. You also need to demonstrate how other professionals were involved in the process and show measurable outcomes. As part of meeting the educational/career development criteria, for example, you need to show that you have an educational plan for yourself that you are following.  For another example, as part of meeting the collaboration criteria, you need to demonstrate the use of the group process. This includes identifying a group of professionals, your role in the group, how often the group met, what you did to help the group succeed, how the group identified, analyzed, and resolved the problem, and what measurable outcomes were achieved. 
 

For additional resources, NOVA presents live webinars each year covering evaluation of your input for your proficiency for promotion to Nurse II and Nurse III.  These webinars provide you with the opportunity to ask questions in real-time. In addition, these webinars are available on NOVA’s web page after the live program for you to review using this link:  https://www.vanurse.org/page/memberonlywebinars

NOVA can help you organize your input for each of the criteria to demonstrate what you have accomplished. If you would like assistance with your proficiency input, go to the NOVA webpage, click on the Members Only tab, and select Mentorship Program, then click Request Proficiency Help.