Correlation of nurses' knowledge and valuation of the quality assurance process.

Nurses are expected to use the QA process as a means of improving the quality of patient care and as a means of professional accountability. The responsibility for preparing nurses to meet this expectation falls first on nurse educators and then on nurse administrators. If a positive relationship had been found between nurses' knowledge of and valuation of the QA process, nurse educators and administrators could have used the relationship in curriculum development and in continuing education planning for students and nurses. By including QA theory and process in nursing curricula, beginning with early nursing education and continuing through educational inservice sessions in the workplace, nurses would be more likely to internalize the concepts of QA. With earlier and continued exposure to the concepts of QA, nurses should gain both knowledge and valuation of the process and would subsequently be better prepared to use the QA process. Since participation in QA activities has been identified as a required function in nursing, there is a need in nursing education and practice for the development of QA programs that attract the attention and participation of staff nurses. To facilitate the development of such programs, the variables that influence nurses' use of the QA process must be identified. As long as the profession of nursing and the regulating bodies over nursing require accountability for professional services and the improvement of patient care in the form of QA programs, nurses' use of the QA process will be of major importance. Some research suggests that implicit or explicit norms of accountability or responsibility regulate individual conduct, rather than personal valuation of the activity. This proposition could be the focus of future studies in nursing QA. Previous studies point to the fact that increased knowledge of a subject or phenomenon is positively related to personal valuation and activity related to the subject or phenomenon. Although this relationship was not found in this study, identification of factors that contribute to an increased valuation of or participation in nursing QA activities should continue to be the subject of nursing research.