Perceived Impact of Pre-Service Integrated Management of ChildhoodIllness (IMCI) on Case Assessment and Management Skills among NursingStudents

Objectives: This study aims to investigate likely impact of pre-service IMCI- training on nursing students’ case assessment and management skills. Methods: The study was carried out at Blinded Nursing Institute, Oman in May 2016. We developed a validated four constructs for developing a hypothetical model. The four constructs namely General Skills (GS), Knowledge, Attitudes and Skills (KAS), Confidence Level (CL) and Holistic Treatment Skills (HTS) that were used as latent variables to highlight their likely impact on the formative variable Assessment and Management Skills (AMS). Data were collected through qualitative structured questionnaires designed to measure participants’ opinions about the studied constructs. For data collection purpose, we developed a qualitative questionnaire and invited nursing students to voluntarily take part in the study. The purpose of the study and research details was explained to the potential participants in written. Participants were invited through printed posters in the institute. In response, 114 participants completed the questionnaires. Four respondents did not complete the entire questionnaire consequently they were excluded from the sample. The final sample size of the completed responses was 110 (n=110). Results: We first examined the factor loadings and calculated variances to ensure convergent validity. By exceeding 0.50, all the items in the model loaded well. We then measured the internal consistency reliability among the items through Cronbach’s Alpha that was observed to be 0.694. For all the constructs, the values exceeded the desired value of 0.50. The composite reliability of all the constructs in the model evidently surpassed the recommended value of 0.700. In the cross-loadings, the value of R2 was noted as 0.675 (R2=67.5%). Conclusion: The findings from the structural model support the hypothetical structural model. All the four studied constructs appear to significantly influence case assessment and management skills of pre-service IMCI-trained nursing students.