This descriptive comparative correlational study was designed to describe and compare the expected and current nursing competency, to examine the correlations between the expected and current nursing competency, and to find factors associated with the expected and current competency of nurses in long-term care settings in Nanning, Guangxi, P.R. China. Quantitative data were collected among 319 nurses in 32 long-term care settings in Nanning City. The Content Validity Index (CVI) was 0.950. The reliability of the questionnaire by Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were 0.979 and 0.980 for the expected and current nursing competency, respectively. Descriptive statistics, Wilcoxon Signed Ranks tests, and Chi-square tests were applied for data analysis. The results revealed that the total expected nursing competency was reported at a high level, whereas the total current nursing competency was at a moderate level.
