Professional Role Competency and Why it is Important

In the world of healthcare we relay on many professional roles to enable our purpose in delivering quality care. The competency of the people who perform their roles is the backbone of safe and effective healthcare. This makes understanding role competency, what it means to be a professional and being able to measure it and improve upon it, a foundational component to healthcare delivery. Engaging in and committing to a professional role development program produces a highly efficient, satisfied and productive workforce improving patient satisfaction, safety, length of stay and quality of care.

Professional Role Competency refers to the capability of a professional to make use of the knowledge, skills and abilities required to perform within the expectations of their role.

Within any given professional role, there is an associated set of behaviors that must be consistent across individuals who perform in that role. For example, the ability to independently lead, act autonomously and have decision-making authority over others is granted based on the belief that all actions will make use of the role expectations, including being ethically centered, grounded in current knowledge and evidence-based, formulated through open dialogue and collaboration with others, and delivered in a skillful and effective manner.

Understanding and Measuring Role Competency

To achieve optimal outcomes from the professionals that make up our workforce we need to be able to measure the effectiveness of role performance. We approach this through a model of role expectations that looks at four dimensions of the professional role; Leader, Scientist, Transferor of Knowledge and Practitioner.

Using these 4 dimensions we are able to assess the role competency of individuals and work with individuals and groups to educate, manage and improve performance of the professional role.