I. Background of the Study
The newly published Commission of Higher Education (CHED) CMO No. 14 Series of 2009 (April 28, 2009) is concern with Policies And Standards For Bachelor Of Science In Nursing (BSN) Program, it emphasizes the Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) curriculum is a competency-based and community-oriented curriculum in the Philippines.
The nurse must be competent in the following Key Areas of Responsibility for which a nurse should demonstrate competence in Safe and quality nursing care, Management of resources and environment, Health education, Legal responsibility, Ethico-moral responsibility, Personal and professional development, Quality improvement, Research, Record Management, Communication, Collaboration and teamwork. (Katharina, A. May, 2009)
The reasons for incorporating changes into the nursing curriculum are to: [1] improve the level of core competency that is able to apply analytical and critical thinking to the nursing practice and [2] to produce nurses that are highly qualified and globally competent in the health care field (GMANews.Tv, April, 2008)
One particular interest of the researchers in the new curriculum is the differences in the Nursing Care Management (NCM) courses between the old and new curriculum. In the old curriculum based on CMO No.30,NCM 101, 102 and 104 is an integration of Medical-Surgical Nursing,Psychiatric Nursing, and Maternal and Child Health Nursing(MCN). Itmeans that in NCM 101, there are three subjects altogether. However, in the new curriculum CMO No.14, Nursing Care Management Courseswere separated according to nursing specialties. For example, NCM 101and 102 deals with only Maternal and Child Health Nursing (Katharina, A., August 2010)
To evaluate the effectiveness of the new curriculum, the researches will study and examine the relationship of the 11 core competencies in the subjects most especially in NCM 101 and 102 taken up by sophomore nursing students. The reason for this is