C-NET

C-NET

[Name of the Writer]

[Name of the Institution]

C-NET

Introduction

The United States of America is a country blessed with a vast range of talent. There are engineers, constructors, builders, software engineers, computer programmers, teachers, professors, chefs, wedding planners, actors, singers, political figures and many other people excelling in their respective fields. Many names can be seen shining and making news every now and then in their areas and bringing fame to themselves and their country. In the field of medicine, many doctors can be seen working hard and making notable contributions in the area of medical science.

Just like doctors, one of the crucial characters in the medical sciences is a nurse. Nurses play a very vital role in the life of a patient as they assist the doctors in the whole therapeutical procedure at the first place, and secondly, they provide services to the patient after the doctor has completed the major medical procedures. Our country needs competent people in every field, especially in nursing. Many institutes are working in the sector of nursing to equip the nurses with quality education and polish their skills in order to make them capable enough to handle the challenges of the modern day medical sciences (Smith, Duell & Martin, 2014).

One of the prominent institutes working in this area is the C-NET. C-NET stands for Center for Nursing Education and Testing Inc. and has been working in New Jersey since 1992. C-NET provides a wide range of services to educate, train and asses the nurses along with test development and administration services to fulfill the needs for the assessment of the nurses. C-NET currently employs 13 people for the purpose of development of tests, item analysis, customer services, application review, and other administrative services.

Discussion

Since nursing education and testing is a very popular field, there are many institutes providing these services and people are opting for them due to their quality services. Just like any other business and educational institute, C-Net has also got tough competition in the market on New Jersey. Two of the major competitors that are a big threat for C-Net are the Best Care College and Achieve Test Prep. A client can easily go for these two institutes as they both are providing high end educational and testing services for the individuals going for pursuing a career in nursing (Alligood, 2017). Both these institutes have been selected due to the excellence they have and the high quality of services provided by them in the market

The competition in the industry for nursing education and testing has increased significantly in recent years as more and more people are entering into this field and choosing nursing as a career option. The competition is based on price and non-price both. Some institutes are providing the same level of education in $37,394 whereas the other institutes can charge as low as $28706 for the same program. So, definitely, the customers will choose the institute with economic fee structure. The role of suppliers in nursing education and testing is played by the institutes that impart the education of nursing and conduct tests and assessments to check the knowledge of the nurses. Whereas the suppliers of the test and the assessment tools are the people, who design and develop the tests for these nurses.

C-NET being a reliable name in the industry of quality education in the area of nursing and patient assistance holds a substantial market share among the clients of New Jersey. Most of the clients consist of the recent graduates who have completed a nursing degree and want to specialize in the further majors of the nursing education. The chances or tendency for the clients to divert from C-NET to the other suppliers is moderate as the services and courses being offered by C-NETY are most updated in the market and till now, almost no nursing training and assessment education is providing such services currently in the market. The only reason for switching could be the price factor or the economic conjectures

As far as the question of new competitors emerging in the market is concerned, there is an excellent chance that new competitors will enter the market as the need for the nursing education is gaining more and more importance with every passing day. In addition to this, already graduated nurses are getting more inclined towards increasing their expertise and achieve the status of a registered nurse.

C-NET’s Current of Competency Based Testing

C-NET provides a variety of services and testing facilities to its clients. One of the sets of its top-rated series of tests was Clinical Judgmental Series; it used to be valued and was a best seller at a time in the past, but now most of the tests that it offered have outdated and no more sold. The Clinical Judgmental Series consisted of four-competency based tests; Care of Children, Care of Older Adults, Basic Nurse Assistant and Essentials of Medication Administration.

Care of Children, Care of Older Adults and Basic Nurse Assistant have become outdated and no longer sold but the fourth and last test, Essentials of Medical Administration, is being still but in a limited quantity as its validity is also running out. Although the tests have been outdated, they still can be updated and made the best sellers once again. These tests can be updated and brought to the standards of the recent tests by adding more value to them.

The area of Child Care has always been a significant area of interest in the circles of medical sciences. Care for Children has also garnered much importance and many nurses are specialized just in the field of childcare (James, Nelson & Ashwill, 2014). Care for older people or geriatrics is also a critical area in which many nurses are entering and choosing it as a career choice (Ramezani, Ahmadi, Mohammadi, & Kazemnejad, 2014). As these are widespread practices nowadays, much information is available for the enhancement in the knowledge. These tests can easily be updated by adding more and more current and updated methods to the course and adding questions about the current knowledge.

Medical administration or essentials of medical administration is also very commonly used practice and is not limited to any specific kind of patients or people belonging to any particular age group. C-NET can apply the same methods just like the tests for Child Care and Older People Care. Along with these strategies, it can also hire experienced educators and test developer more so that they can impart more recent knowledge about the current practices going on in the medical field and what the specialist in the field are doing and test the nursing students on their basis.

Plan to Market Competency Based Testing at C-NET

The results and collected from the recent observation of the practices and tests of C-NET show many positive aspects of the institute. They reflect the competency and the knowledge of the test developers of C-NET and how they use their skills and information to make contributions to the field of medical science. The only thing that is needed is to enhance the marketing strategies little bit so that the tests and products can catch the attention of maximum people and the profits of C-NET can grow.

It has been observed that the results of the tests designed and conducted by C-NET are mostly utilized by hospitals and healthcare providers to analyze the knowledge and skills of the graduate nurses. Having a C-NET certification or diploma is considered, and extra benefit for the nurses and they use the results to boast about their competence in the field (Curtis, Comiskey & Dempsey, 2015).

Considering the importance of competency-based tests for the candidates to get a good job and start a stable career, it becomes simpler to devise such marketing strategies which will benefit all the participants involved in the cycle, i.e., the nursing graduates, medical practitioners, hospitals, health care centers and ultimately C-NET. C-NET can highlight the benefits of these tests for all the members as mentioned above and present to them that how C-NET tests are better than the other testing services.

In the case of hospitals, C-NET can arrange for teams or representatives to visit and meet the doctors and inform them, about the qualities of the tests being conducted by C-NET. This will let more and more doctors to think and use C-NET’s services for the purpose of recruitment of their nursing staff. The same strategy can be adopted for marketing to the management of various hospitals.

On the other hand, C-NET can attract students by informing them about the reliability and validity of their tests. Various advertisement campaigns can be run like distribution of brochures among the students of different colleges and pasting posters over suitable places. An online advertisement is also a good idea to invite clients and boost sales.

Conclusion

In short, it can be concluded that C-NET is already a well-established and regularized institute for the development and conduction of nursing tests. It has become a brand in the region of New Jersey and people having nursing degrees prefer to take competency tests though C-NET. Still, there is a threat of fierce competition in the market and competitors entering into the market. To cater to this threat, C-Net should devise proper marketing strategies and bring improvements in its services to keep them updated so that it can still stand out to be the number one test service provider for the nursing students.

References

Alligood, M. R. (2017). Nursing Theorists and Their Work-E-Book. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Curtis, E., Comiskey, C., & Dempsey, O. (2015). Correlational research: Importance and use in nursing and health research. Nurse researcher, 6, 20-25.

James, S. R., Nelson, K., & Ashwill, J. (2014). Nursing care of children-E-book: principles and practice. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Ramezani, M., Ahmadi, F., Mohammadi, E., & Kazemnejad, A. (2014). Spiritual care in nursing: a concept analysis. International nursing review, 61(2), 211-219.

Smith, S. F., Duell, D. J., & Martin, B. C. (2014). Clinical nursing skills. Pearson.