Developing a self-checklist of staff development behavior for associate nurse unit managers using the Delphi method

The most significant influence on nurses' professional growth is through work under direct guidance in clinical settings. Associate nurse unit managers perform direct patient care with the staff, as well as assist management work of nurse unit managers. They can be excellent role models for the staff. We examined their behaviors that help promote staff development, aimed to identify effective behaviors, and created a self-checklist to evaluate them. We created 53 items to assess staff development behaviors, which were evaluated via a Delphi survey with 252 experts and a questionnaire survey with 124 associate nurse unit managers in Japan to evaluate whether the created item was appropriate. The results of the Delphi survey showed an agreement rate of over 90%, and associate nurse unit managers showed an acceptance rate of 82.6-99.2% for 40 of 53 items. Consequently, we created 40-item self-checklist of staff development behaviors for associate nurse unit managers with adequate validity. This checklist would be helpful for them to promote staff development while working in clinical settings and would contribute to enhancing the quality of nursing.