The assessment of safe nursing care: development and psychometric evaluation

Abstract

Aim. To develop an instrument for the assessment of safe nursing care (ASNC) within the Iranian context and psychometrically evaluate its reliability and validity.Background. There is a need for a valid and reliable instrument to assess how nurses employ the components of safe nursing care in clinical practice in non-Western countries.Methods. This methodological study was conducted in two phases: (a) a qualitative phase of instrument development, and (b) a quantitative phase of psychometric evaluation of the Assessment of Safe Nursing Care (ASNC). The instrument's content validity was assessed by experts in the field of safe nursing care. The reliability of this instrument was examined by using internal consistency reliability and intra-rater reliability analysis. Exploratory factor analysis was then conducted to establish the instrument's initial construct validity.Results. The instrument developed was a questionnaire with 32 items. The Cronbach's alpha of the scale was 0.92 and Intra-class Correlation Coefficient for intra-rater reliability was 0.78.Exploratory factor analysis resulted in a four-factor solution: (a) nursing skills, (b) assessing the patient's psychological needs, (c) assessing the patient's physical need, and (d) nurses' teamwork. The four factors accounted for 63.54% of the observed variance. Conclusion.The ASNC can be applied to a wide variety of settings due to the broad range of methods utilized to generate items and domains, its comprehensive consideration of the principles of safe care, and its initial reliability and validity.Implications for Nursing Management. The ASNC can help nurse managers assess whether clinical nurses are prepared to apply their safe care skills in clinical practice. It can also be used by clinical nurses to assess their own and peers' practice to detect potential areas for improvement in nursing care and help nurse managers with planning appropriate quality improvement programs.

Nurses’ perceptions of systems thinking and safe nursing care: A cross‐sectional study

“…Furthermore, 30 nurses participated in a pilot STS test and its reliability was assessed using Cronbach's alpha coefficient (α = 0.86). Assessment of safe nursing care (ASNC): Rashvand et al (2017) designed and validated ASNC in Iran. The Persian and English versions of ASNC are available, but the Persian version was applied in this study.…”

“…A panel of experts confirmed the content validity of the ASNC, and its construct validity was calculated by factor analysis. The internal consistency of the questionnaire was acceptable considering the Cronbach's alpha of 0.92 for the total questionnaire and 0.86–0.95 for its dimensions (Rashvand et al, 2017). In this study, a pilot study was conducted on 30 nurses to confirm the ASNC reliability, which resulted in a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.94.…”

“…Safe nursing care is defined as application of nurses ’ knowledge and skills to deliver high‐quality care, so that the risk of harm to patients is minimized during the nursing practice (Vaismoradi, Salsali, Turunen, Marck, & Bondas, 2012). Nurses’ involvement in safe nursing care has extended the nurse managers’ responsibilities, such as coordinating and integrating multiple aspects of quality care, especially monitoring and assessing the factors required to reduce unsafe practices (Rashvand et al, 2017).…”

Nurses’ Adherence to Patient Safety Principles: A Systematic Review

“…Nurses are expected to adhere to organizational strategies for identifying harms and risks through assessing the patient, planning for care, monitoring and surveillance activities, double-checking, offering assistance, and communicating with other healthcare providers [13,14]. In addition to clear policies, leadership, research driven safety initiatives, training of healthcare staff, and patient participation [1,15], nurses' adherence to the principles of patient safety [16,17] is required for the success of interventions aimed at the prevention of practice errors and to achieve sustainable and safer healthcare systems.…”

Relationship between ethical leadership and organisational commitment of nurses with perception of patient safety culture

“…It also includes interventions to maximize the likelihood of early detection of errors. For enhancing the nursing skills for safe care, it is necessary that nurses become familiar with the components of safe nursing care and utilise them (Rashvand et al., ).…”