Shu-Fang Chang
Aim: Patient safety is a concern for medical health-care
communities worldwide. Although new nursing staff
have completed first aid technical courses and possess a
Basic Life Support license, they still do not meet the ability
to instantly recognize and handle medical emergencies;
this could thread the safety of patients. Therefore,
recognizing first aid ability of new nursing staff crucial
for maintaining patient safety. Nursing personnel are
usually the first to detect changes in patients’ conditions
and subsequently initiate first aid procedures. The aim
of this study was to develop an instrument that measures
the first aid ability of new nursing staff.
Methods: This research adopted a cross-sectional study
design. The study sample was from a medical center in
northern Taiwan who were undergoing a training course
for new nursing staff. The first stage was the initial
drafting of the questionnaire contents, then validity evaluation
by a Delphi expert panel, and finally conducted
confirmatory factor analysis. SPSS version 22.0 applied
to conduct descriptive statistical analysis of the variables
and AMOS version 22.0 was used to conduct CFA.
Results: After revised the content by the expert panel implemented,
the final New Nursing Personnel’s First Aid
Ability scale formed. The finalized version of the questionnaire
contained five ability domains, namely critical
thinking, coping of emergency, technical operations in
clinical emergencies, cooperation, and communication;
the overall content validity index of the questionnaire was
.992. The results of CFA indicated the standardized factor
loadings for factors with convergent validity ranged
from .655 to .903 and the Cronbach’s α for overall first
aid ability was 0.920. The CFA results revealed that the
five domains construct validity and overall goodness-of-fit.
Conclusion: The results indicated that the developed
measurement scale with high reliability and validity, and
the five domains as objective indices for evaluating the
first aid ability of new nursing staff.