Development and psychometric evaluation of Clinical Practice Self-Efficacy Scale for nursing students

Abstract

Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the importance of nurses' clinical performance, and accordingly, nursing educators have emphasized students' clinical practice and performance. This study developed a Clinical Practice Self-Efficacy Scale for nursing students and examined its psychometric properties.Methods: The authors reviewed instruments for selecting items for the scale in the areas of clinical skills, communication, infection control, safety, and nursing process. After preliminary items were selected, ten experts consisting of nursing professors and clinical nurses reviewed the items considering Korean clinical and educational situations. The data for the psychometric evaluation was collected from 257 nursing students in their 2nd, 3rd, and 4th years and then analyzed.Results: The confirmatory factor analysis showed that the goodness of fit of this scale with five factors represented by 40 items was appropriate. The significant positive correlations with general self-efficacy indicated sound construct validity. The senior nursing students showed higher scores than others, as we expected. Cronbach’s alpha was .94.Conclusion: The Clinical Practice Self-Efficacy Scale is appropriate for measuring Korean nursing students' self-efficacy of clinical practice. It is expected to act as a good tool to measure the effects of clinical practice education.