Exploring hospital compliance with the primary nursing care model: validating an inventory using the Delphi method

Area of Science:

• Nursing Care Models
• Healthcare Quality Improvement

Background:

• Primary nursing is a personalized care model emphasizing nurse-patient relationships and continuity of care.
• Existing literature lacks structured tools for developing, implementing, and evaluating primary nursing.
• A validated checklist is needed to assess hospital adherence to primary nursing principles.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a structured checklist for assessing hospital compliance with the primary nursing care model.
• To create a reliable instrument for evaluating the implementation of primary nursing.

Main Methods:

• The Delphi method was employed for checklist development and validation.
• A panel of six primary nursing experts participated in a two-round consensus process.
• Data collection involved a structured questionnaire with a 4-point Likert scale; content validity index (I-CVI) and kappa statistic were calculated.

Main Results:

• The initial checklist version showed a mean relevance score of 3.34 (I-CVI=0.84), with three items below the 0.78 threshold.
• After expert review and revision, the checklist achieved improved I-CVIs, with a mean relevance score of 3.61 (I-CVI=0.93).
• The final checklist demonstrated strong content validity, with S-CVI/UA of 0.58 and S-CVI/Ave of 0.93.

Conclusions:

• Implementing validated checklists is crucial for measuring primary nursing compliance and providing feedback to nurses.
• Such checklists facilitate standardized evaluation and comparison of primary nursing practices across different healthcare settings.
• Future research should investigate the correlation between checklist results and actual nursing-sensitive patient outcomes.