The development and validation of the Person-centred Practice Inventory-Student instrument: A modified Delphi study

Global health care policy and regulatory requirements indicate that nursing students must be prepared for person-centred practice. Despite this, there is no evidence of a theoretically derived instrument to measure students' perceptions of person-centred practice.

To adapt the Person-centred Practice Inventory-Staff instrument for use with healthcare students and to test the adapted instrument.

This study involved a two-phased, modified Delphi Technique. In Phase 1 students' views about items in the Person-centred Practice Inventory-Staff were explored to gain consensus about items for inclusion in an adapted student version. In Phase 2, the psychometric properties of the adapted instrument were tested.

A UK university.

Pre-registration nursing students.

Phase 1 involved an iterative process including three focus groups (n = 13) followed by Delphi surveys (Round 1: n = 382; Round 2: n = 144). Thematic analysis was used to analyse students' comments and consensus percentages were calculated after each Delphi round. Phase 2 involved a survey using the adapted instrument (n = 532). The measurement model was analysed using confirmatory factor analysis.

The results indicated stability in the measurement model with this sample. Item correlation scores were between 0.22 and 0.74 with no evidence of collinearity and factor loadings ranged from 0.44-0.86. Fit indices indicated goodness of fit between the observed data and the respective domains in the Person-centred Practice Framework (chi-squared to degrees of freedom ratio of <3, root mean square estimations of approximation 0.06 for all domains and between 0.05 and 0.07 at 90% confidence interval. Comparative fit index estimates ranged from 0.90-0.97).

This study provides initial validation of the Person-centred Practice Inventory-Student instrument which is offered as a measure of students' perceptions of their person-centred practice. The instrument has utility in assessing the efficacy of curricula in preparing students as person-centred practitioners.