Study On The Construction Of Measurement Tools Of Nursing Soft Skills

With the entry of the World Trade Organization, the pluralistic development of medical service as well as the inrush of foreign funded medical institutions, our hospitals are facing fierce competition and severe challenges. The level of hospital service has become the competitive focus. As the transformation of the nursing mode, it is necessary to set up'people oriented'holistic nursing philosophy to meet the physical and psychological health of patients. The quality of nursing relates to the satisfaction degree of patient. However, the main causes of nurse-patient disputes are the impatient, simple explanation and invalid communication of nurses instead of technical problems. In order to meet the ever higher service demand of patients and get rid of the traditional nursing model which is dominated by'hard skills', the capacities, such as communicating, cooperating, expressing, listening, observing and judging, analyzing and synthesizing, solving problems,educating and consulting et al, are known as'soft skills'which are getting more and more attention. What's more, they play an important role in improving quality of nursing. Hospital administrators are paying more and more attention on nurses'soft skills when selecting nurses. Because there are no objective measurement tools, they can only depend on subjective interviews. In order to provide an objective basis for selecting the soft skills of nurses, learn about the levels of soft skills of the existing nurses and make our nursing team a group with high technical level which may be full of humanism and humanistic as well, it is essential to define nursing soft skills, understand the structure model of nursing soft skills as well as evaluate them. Meanwhile hospital administrators can be provided with an objective indicator for evaluating soft skills in the selection of new nurses.Objectives: To understand the definition and structure model of nursing soft skills, and to create reliable and valid measurement tools for assessing these skills.Methods: The definition and structure model of nursing soft skills were defined primarily on the basis of comprehensive analysis of literature and repeated discussion in the research group. Then, twenty domestic experts were selected, including ten nursing management experts, four nursing educational experts, five psychologists and one sociologist. After two rounds of expert consultation, the definition and structure model of nursing soft skills were revised. Based on literature analysis, a measurement tool of nursing soft skills with eighty-eight items was established after repeated modification, by means of Delphi technique, interviewing, open questionnairing and psychological measurement, et al. Then four hundred and twenty-two nurses from six hospitals in Chongqing were surveyed and the results were analyzed with SPSS15.0 including item analysis and exploratory factor analysis. Results were then used to construct a nursing soft skills assessment scale which included sixty items. After the survey of eight hundred and one nurses from another eight hospitals in Chongqing, the results were analyzed with the SPSS15.0 and LISREL8.70 software packages including item analysis, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, internal consistency reliability and split-half reliability. A nursing soft skills assessment scale including fifty-six items was constructed on the basis of these results.Results:1. Definition of nursing soft skills. Nursing soft skills are nurses'inherent quality, interpersonal and management skills, which may facilitate the better application of technical skills and knowledge in nursing. That is, the social and personal skills. They oppose to professional operation skills of nursing.2. Structure model of nursing soft skills. Nursing soft skills are composed by social and personal skills. Social skills include interpersonal skills and organizational management skills. Personal skills include self-management skills, professional sentiment and cognitive skills. Interpersonal skills consist of interpersonal communication, transposition thinking and teamwork. Organizational management skills consist of planning skills, organization skills, leadership skills, coordination skills, controlling skills and human resources management skills. Self-management skills consist of self-awareness, self-motivation, self-control, stress management, time management, contingency skills and independent learning skills. Professional sentiment consists of professional ethics and professional attitude. Cognitive skills consist of critical thinking skills and innovative thinking skills.3. Measurement tools of nursing soft skills. The scale are composed by six subscales, including interpersonal skills, organizational management skills, self-management skills, professional sentiment, cognitive skills and lie scale with a total of fifty-six items. Lie scale is mainly used for testing lying tendency. The number of items in each subscale is different. The higher the score, the higher the levels of their nursing soft skills are. By analyzing the reliability of the scale, it indicates that internal consistency reliability is 0.894 and split-half reliability is 0.845. The internal consistency reliabilities of the subscales are from 0.541 to 0.771, and split-half reliabilities from 0.543 to 0.760. The confirmatory factor analysis shows that the concept validity of the scale is well.Conclusions and Innovations:This is the first systematic research on nursing soft skills. After literature review and expert consultation, the definition of nursing soft skills and the structure model were defined, and the nursing soft skills assessment scale was created. The psychological measurement of the tools indicated that it had good performance which could be used for the selection of nurses'soft skills and could be expanded application. It provided hospital administrators with an objective indicator for evaluating soft skills in the selection of new nurses.