APPLYING THE KIRKPATRICK MODEL TO DEVELOPING AN EFFECTIVE CHARGE NURSE COURSE IN THE SINGAPORE CONTEXT

Traditionally, nurse leaders are often promoted in unplanned fashion to perform the leadership role without necessary preparations often causing unnecessary stresses for their team. With the recognition of such leadership vacuum and the necessity of succession planning, the Charge Nurse (CN) role is created as part of the strategic priority to provide early exposure and role transition opportunities for Senior Staff Nurse (SSNs) with leadership potential. The Singapore hospital recognised the importance of the CN’s contributions on the efficiency and effectiveness of the operation of the units. An initiative is therefore put underway to commence on the development of a Charge Nurse Course (CNC). The author established the benchmark standards in the global context and built on the contextual differences for the development of course. On the other hand, the range of pedagogical approaches in the literature have also been considered extensively, especially if any of these theories have recent developments. As such, this paper aims to provide a firm foundation in which the CNC development can be contextualized towards the local hospital by recognising the similarities and differences in the CN roles across the world in order to establish the best approaches and pedagogies for the development of an effective CNC – a course to prepare SSN for the newly developed CN role and facilitate leadership transition. Finally, the Kirkpatrick Model is employed in the development phases to maximise the course effectiveness and triangulate the proposed pedagogical approach in order to determine the best approach.