A methodological study to develop “Clinical Competence Self-Assessment Tool (CCSAT)”to assess perceived clinical competence of upcoming nursing graduates

Introduction: Globally shortage of nurses has always remained an issue1. To manage this new inexperienced nursing graduates are increasingly being employed in hospitals. More than 10% of hospital staff nurses are new nursing graduates2. Although nurse competence has been evaluated in past studies, the competence levels of nursing students immediately prior to graduation is not explored by many researchers. Thus a methodological study was undertaken to develop a “clinical competence self assessment tool (CCSAT)” to assess perceived clinical competence of upcoming nursing graduates. Methods: Preliminary draft of CCSAT was developed using extensive literature review and structured questionnaire from purposively selected 40 nurse educators and executives. A total of 160 items were generated. A focus group discussion among randomly selected 10 nurses from the above group reduced the number of items from 160 to 153. To further refine and validate the items using modified Delphi technique, a panel of 12 national nursing experts was selected. The initial item pool of 153 items reduced to 94 in three Delphi rounds. Results: A CCSAT with three subscales resulted, 19 items in professional behavior, 21 items in knowledge and 54 items in skills subscale. The Content Validity Index for the final CCSAT was 0.94. Conclusion: Consensus on all the 94 items of CCSAT was obtained among 12 national nursing experts in three Delphi rounds.