Psychometric testing of an instrument measuring nurse aides' patient safety attitudes

To develop and test the patient safety attitude scale-nurse aide (PSAS-NA) scale in measuring nurse aides' attitudes to patient safety and event reporting.

Although nurse aides are unlicensed personnel, their roles in delivering care can not be ignored. A measure specific to nurse aides is needed.

This is a cross-sectional design study. A literature review was conducted to generate items. Content validity, construct validity, convergent/divergent validity and internal consistency were examined. A convenient sample of 213 nurse aides working at two hospital-based long-term care institutions in Taiwan was recruited.

From the initial 61-item scale, a 39-item instrument was retained by principal component analysis (PCA) and four factors were extracted: daily safety practice, organizational safety strategies, event reporting practice and event reporting conflict. Four factors accounted for 51.74% of the total variance. Cronbach's alpha ranged from 0.83 to 0.92. Event reporting conflict was significantly negatively correlated with event reporting practice (r = -0.16, P < 0.05).

The PSAS-NA can be used to assess nurse aides' attitudes to patient safety and event reporting. Health care mangers/supervisors can provide education and training programmes to nurse aides according to the assessment results.