Measuring nursing competence: development of a self-assessment tool for general nurses across Europe

In response to the global challenge of providing and delivering effective health care, the aim of the European Healthcare Training and Accreditation Network project is to work towards improving the transparency of European Union (EU) nurse workforce qualifications, competence, skills, experience and culture. Currently, there is no detailed or tangible method available for comparison, which is perceived as an obstacle to EU nurse workforce mobility.

Clearly, this is an important issue that needs to be addressed. Accordingly, this paper reports on the development and psychometric testing of a nurse competence self-assessment questionnaire tool, with the aim of contributing to and enhancing the transparency of nurse competence and ultimately facilitating greater nurse workforce mobility across the EU.

The project comprises a partnership led by a school of nursing in London, operating in collaboration with nursing and other academics from institutions in Belgium, Germany, Greece and Spain.

Subsequent to a review of literature on nurse competence, a 108 item, post-registration nurse competence self-assessment questionnaire was developed. It elicits information indicating nurse's self-assessment of their competence in the EU country where they trained and qualified and are currently still employed. Responses invite a self-reported frequency of nursing function, this being recommended as the most accurate and least threatening way of assessing competency. During the development process, the questionnaire, constructed from EU countries' competence frameworks, was deemed to be relevant to the measurement of nurse competence by a group of professors of nursing, senior nurse educators, senior nurse managers and other academics thus attesting to the questionnaire's content validity.

A convenience sample of 588 post-registration, generalist nurses from medical or surgical inpatient wards/units were surveyed from acute hospitals in the partner countries (UK n=100, Belgium n=113, Greece n=95, Germany n=150, Spain n=130).

Psychometric testing, as expressed by Cronbach's alpha values and by principal component factor analysis, suggests that the questionnaire has an acceptable degree of reliability, construct validity and further supports the content validity.

In the future, it is envisaged that nurses will be able to utilise the questionnaire to make more informed judgement about the match between their competence and that required of a possible host country. Employers will be able to detect any differences in the required competence levels of potential employees, thus facilitating greater EU nurse workforce mobility.