Employer Quotes

The quotes below are about this issue:
Health care professionals synthesize and analyze complex information. Therefore, analytical and problem-solving skills are extremely important.

Employer Quote	Region
"Critical thinking skills."	Northeast
"I think that the nurses I'm hiring have good technical skills, but they don't always know how to put it all together. They know how to go out and assess for this, and this, and this. They know if they see edema, and they know if they see weight gain, but they aren't able to put it all together, 'Okay, they've gained weight and they have edema, so that means that we need to look at certain possibilities of what's going on here.' We need to follow up with that, and not just document what we saw. So, they have the skills to do the assessment, but then to put it all together and to follow-up with doing something with that assessment is sometimes lacking. And I think that might go along with communication skills."	Central
"I think the assessment and analytic abilities. We're big on data and being able to look at the whole picture. And we use the technology in a way where you extract that information, know what you're looking at, understand what it's telling you, and you're able to communicate that."	Southeast
"I think what is happening is, again, a lot of us are in adult services and the clients that are coming to us are very complex today. These folks are sick, and they are chronically sick. It's not an acute state anymore, and there are seven diagnoses of very clinically-complex patients. And nurses coming out of college understand what diabetes is, and they understand what COPD is, but they don't understand how those things tie together. And if you have seven diagnoses, they can't comprehend how to function in that capacity of that many chronic illnesses."	Central
"It's being able to have some analytical and critical thinking skills. I think those are some of the areas that could be beefed-up somewhat in terms of looking at a whole picture."	Southeast
"The other piece that I think we are seeing is when the program, you know, it's a transitional program from an LPN to an RN, so it's maybe a different sort of graduate. And maybe that's where some of those skills, the ability to see the big picture and focus, have that sense of professional practice—and that's one of the concerns that we've seen."	Central
"What we're seeing is that care is becoming much more complex. We need people who can think critically and act on their feet. We need people who are good not only with family members, but also with physicians and other team members. They need to take that leadership role. We really think that the education level of the RN needs to go up."	Metro