Developing an instrument to measure nurses' attitudes towards nursing students during clinical practice: A quantitative study.

BACKGROUND

Since nursing students' interactions with nurses in the clinical practice process play an important role in nursing education and practice, it is a necessity to evaluate nurses' attitudes towards students.

AIM

To develop a valid and reliable measurement tool to determine the attitudes of nurses' towards nursing students in the clinical practice process.

DESIGN

This study used a quantitative cross-sectional design.

SETTINGS

The study was conducted in a public hospital in Turkey between February and April 2024.

PARTICIPANTS

The sample of the study consisted of 364 nurses.

METHODS

Through literature review and qualitative data analysis, 40 items were identified for the item pool of the scale and these items were presented to 22 experts. After the content validity, the draft scale consisting of 32 items was used as a data collection tool. Lawshe's Content Validity Ratio, Kaiser-Mayer-Olkin Coefficient, Bartlett's test, Exploratory Factor Analysis, Principal Component Analysis, Varimax Factor Rotation Method, Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Cronbach's Alpha Internal Consistency Coefficient, Spearman Correlation Coefficient and Wilcoxon Signed Ranks tests were used to analyze the data.

RESULTS

As a result of the exploratory factor analysis, it was determined that there were twenty-two items and five sub-dimensions in the scale. The Cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient was 0.770 for the clinical experience and ethics sub-dimension, 0.811 for the collaboration sub-dimension, 0.792 for the desire to learn sub-dimension, 0.765 for the continuous development sub-dimension, 0.736 for the communication skills sub-dimension and 0.903 for the total scale. As a result of the test-retest reliability analysis, it was determined that all items and factor scores showed significant relationships between the two applications (p < 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS

The scale was found to be a valid and reliable measurement tool that can be used to determine the attitudes of nurses' towards nursing students in the clinical practice process.