Dimensions of leadership in undergraduate nursing students. Validation of a tool

Nurses require leadership skills in order to fulfil their clinical role in an ever-changing healthcare environment. The acquisition of such skills should therefore begin during their professional training.

To identify the dimensions of leadership present among nursing undergraduates in the original Self-Assessment Leadership Instrument (SALI).

This was a validation study involving the translation and cultural adaptation of the Self-Assessment Leadership Instrument (SALI) for use with nursing undergraduates in the Spanish context.

Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences in Spain.

Participants were 280 nursing undergraduates (years 1-4) from a Spanish university. The SALI was adapted following the back-translation procedure, and its psychometric properties (validity and reliability) were analyzed.

The Spanish version of the SALI maintains the 40 items of the original scale. Scores on the Spanish SALI were positively and significantly correlated (0.542, p = .000) with scores on the General Self-Efficacy Scale (convergent scale) and negatively and significantly correlated (-0.348, p = .000) with the total score on the Lille Apathy Rating Scale (divergent scale). Factor analysis indicated that scores on the Spanish SALI loaded on four dimensions: Strategic thinking, Emotional intelligence, Impact and influence, and Teamwork skills, which together accounted for 43.42% of the total variance. Cronbach's alpha for the total scale was 0.870 (range 0.688-0.781 for the four dimensions). Test-retest reliability over a 15-day interval was high (ICC = 0.929, p = .000).

The study has identified four key dimensions of leadership that nursing students need to acquire and provides a valid and reliable tool for assessing them. This will enable nurse educators to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching initiatives aimed at developing these competences.