The Establishment And The Empirical Study Of The Nursing Informatics Competency Scale

Objective: The study utilized a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods, the aim of this study was to develop the nursing informatics competency scale,which had a high reliability and validity,which was also suitable for the national conditions of our country and the characteristics of nursing subject.So that we could provide a tool to evaluate nurses’ nursing informatics competency.The contents and methods:(1)Retrieved the revelant literature at home and abroad to know the study of nursing informatics competency,from the clarifing of the revelant concepts to the interrelationship of the study,then defining the concepts and the connotation of nursing informatics competency.It could lay the theoretical foundation for the study on nursing informatics competency.(2)Establishing the item pool of nursing informatics competency,after the three rounds of Delphi method,the evaluation index system of nursing informatics competency was created.At the first round,we selected five experts to conduct a pre-survey,which mainly consulted on the structure of the table,the selection of index and the representation of the words;At the second round,we selected 15 experts,according to the results of the experts’ interviews,we used the method of boundary value to select the index.At the three round,we selected 14 experts,according to the results of the experts’ interviews,we used the method of AHP to establish the weight of the index.After the three rounds,the evaluation index system of nursing informatics competency was established,which accorded with the China’s national conditions and cultural background,the prototype of nursing informatics competency scale was formed.(3)Organizing the nursing informatics competency scale,and then evaluated and revisied the items.Based on the objective of the study and the principles of statistical methods,we conducted the investigation and choosed sample size to delete the index of the initial nursing informatics competency scale so that it could achieve a good reliability and validity.(4)Verifing the reliability and validity of nursing informatics competency scale.The reliability of the nursing informatics scale mainly included internal consistency and split half reliability;The validity mainly included the content validity,construct validity and discriminant validity.Results:(1)Based on the characteristics subject of nursing informatics and the concept of nursing informatics competency,using the methods of Delphi and AHP to establish the evaluation index system of nursing informatics competency and its weight.The set of evaluation index system contained 3 first-rank indexes,7 second-rank indexes and 54 third-rank indexes.(2)The methods of item analysis and exploratory factor analysis were used to establish the item of the nursing informatics competency scale. The scale consisted of 5 dimensions(consciousness of nursing informatics, computer skills,the capabilities of the computer software management, nursing informatics technology,the capabilities of nursing informatics management) 32 items.The exploratory factor analysis was made up of 5 common factors,the cumulative contribution rate was 61.0%, which had a good construct validity and was roughly consistent with the theoretical assumption.(3)The results of the study showed that the total scale’ Cronbach’α was 0.947,subscales of the Cronbach’α were 0.822, 0.877, 0.786, 0.719, 0.939; The Cronbach’α of the Guttman split-half were 0.896 and 0.936; The content validity index of CVI was 0.957,and each item and total scores were highly correlated, between each item and total score correlations had reached a significant level(P < 0.01); The firmatory factor analysis results showed that model fitting was good(χ2/df=0.293, AGFI =0.82, RMSEA =0.06, RMR=0.04, CFI = 0.91).(4)The conveience samping method was used to distinguish the nursing informatics competency among nurses in tertiary general hospital,it could also validated the discriminant validity of the scale. The results showed that there was significant difference(P < 0.01) among nursing staffs in 4 different hospital,it also showed the scale had a discriminant validity.Conclusion: The nursing informatics competency had good reliability, validity and discriminant validity, which provided an objective, scientific and reliable evaluation tool for assessing the competency of nursing informatics. It provided a new perspective for the research of nursing informatics competency and reference for related research.