Learning from success: improving undergraduate education through understanding the capabilities of successful nurse graduates.

This paper reports on a study of nursing graduates identified as high performers by their nursing unit managers. The study involved 17 graduates from two teaching hospitals, one in the inner city of Sydney and the other in regional New South Wales. The aim of this study was to identify the capabilities that were seen to be most important for successful nursing practice during the first 2-6 years following employment as registered nurses and to evaluate through backward mapping, the degree to which university programmes were developing these capabilities. This study is part of a larger scale study of a number of professional disciplines that will be used to shape the ongoing evolution of the undergraduate programmes in these disciplines at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). The results from this study provide evidence that while capability in technical skill is necessary for successful practice as a nurse, it is certainly not sufficient. A range of 'emotional intelligence' capabilities have been identified by both graduate nurses and their nursing unit managers as being significant factors for successful practice. It would be important that a curriculum provided a range of learning experiences that included content related to emotional intelligence, and it may be that by directing attention to the total undergraduate learning experience rather than just what is taught, that curriculum developers can do much to provide educational opportunities that encourage the capabilities identified.