Development of a professional competency framework for Australian sonographers - perspectives for developing competencies using a Delphi methodology
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Date
2022
Authors
Childs, J.
Thoirs, K.
Quinton, A.
Osborne, B.
Edwards, C.
Stoodley, P.
Lombardo, P.
Mcdonald, S.
Slade, D.
Chandler, A.
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International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 2022; 34(2)
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<h4>Background</h4>Professional competencies are important for enhancing alignment between the needs of education, industry and health consumers, whilst describing public expectations around health professionals. The development of competency standards for the sonography profession defines the behaviours, skills and knowledge sonographers should demonstrate for each learning and experience level.<h4>Objective</h4>The objective of this project was to develop a set of professional competency standards for the sonography profession which described in depth the behaviours, skills and knowledge sonographers should demonstrate across multiple learning and experience levels.<h4>Methods</h4>Representatives of three Australian ultrasound professional associations and seven tertiary institutions involved in entry-level sonographer education in Australia formed a research team (RT). The RT recruited an expert panel that responded to six survey rounds. Using a Delphi methodology, the results and free-text comments from each previous round were fed back to participants in the subsequent survey rounds to achieve a consensus.<h4>Results</h4>The project developed a professional competency framework for sonographers, which included four major domains: detailed competency standards, sonographer knowledge, sonographer attitudes and a holistic competency matrix [https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.17148035.v2.].<h4>Conclusion</h4>The Delphi methodology is an effective way to develop professional competency standards. This paper describes the methods and challenges in developing such standards for sonographers which could be translated to other health professionals.
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Copyright 2022 The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of International Society for Quality in Health Care. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)