Toward the Definition of a Repertoire of Technical Professional Specialist Competencies for Operating Room Nurses: An Ethnographic Study.

Registered nurses in the operating room require specialized competencies that surpass basic educational training. Existing national and international documents attempt to outline these competencies but often lack comprehensive details. To address this, a repertoire of technical and pro Citation: Reato, F.; Bresil, A.; D’Angelo, C.; Gorli, M.; Ivziku, D.; Lommi, M.; Carcano, G. Toward the Definition of a Repertoire of Technical Professional Specialist Competencies for Operating Room Nurses: An Ethnographic Study. Healthcare 2024, 12, 1774. https://doi.org/10.3390/ healthcare12171774 Academic Editor: Abdel-Latif Mohamed Received: 21 July 2024 Revised: 29 August 2024 Accepted: 1 September 2024 Published: 5 September 2024 Copyright: © 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). fessional competencies for operating room nurses, aligned with European and National Qualifications Frameworks, is proposed. Aim: Develop a repertoire of technical and professional competencies for perioperative and perianesthesiological specialist nursing roles. Methods: An at-home ethnography design was employed, utilizing participant observation, interviews to the double, and focus groups. Convenience sampling included 46 participants from a university and a public hospital in northern Italy. Data were collected from September 2021 to June 2023 and analyzed using inductive content analysis and data triangulation. Results: Identified 17 specialized technical professional compe tencies for perioperative and perianesthesiological nursing, divided into 6 areas of activity. These competencies encompass 19 learning outcomes, 152 tasks, 222 knowledge elements, and 218 skills. Conclusions: This competency repertoire aids in the public recognition of qualifications and serves as a valuable tool for identifying, validating, and certifying competencies. Future research should focus on exploring the competencies of central sterilization nurses and transversal competencies.