Development and validation of a core competence instrument for clinical nursing teachers: A mixed-methods study

Background: Competence-based education (CBE) highlights the important position of clinical nursing teachers and stipulates additional requirements for them. However, research on the core competence of clinical nursing teachers remains lacking, which has hindered their development and the cultivation of nursing students.Objectives: Developing and verifying a core competence instrument to evaluate clinical nursing teachers' competence in clinical settings and provide empirical guidance for their development. Design: A mixed-methods study including qualitative and quantitative methods.Settings: Primarily, 9 universities and hospitals throughout China. Participants: Fourteen nursing experts and 2 students participated in the qualitative study, and 626 nursing professionals ultimately participated in the quantitative study.Methods: The instrument was developed based on behavioral event interviews and expert consultation as well as exploratory factor analysis using a cross-sectional survey, following which the instrument was verified by confirmatory factor analysis.Results: A 4-factor core competence instrument for clinical nursing teachers was developed and verified; the four factors included education and teaching competence, clinical nursing competence, management competence and professional awareness and attitude, and the instrument included 25 items in total. The instrument has an explanatory degree of 90.58 %, and it exhibits good reliability and validity as well as a good fit to the data. Conclusions: This instrument can provide theoretical guidance for the development of clinical nursing teachers and can be widely used as an effective tool in practice. Nursing administrators and educators should implement policies and programs to help clinical nursing teachers improve their competencies with regard to these four aspects, which can play an important role in the development of nurse education.