Instruments for measuring patient safety competencies in nursing: a scoping review

Patient safety competencies in nursing are essential for the quality of healthcare. To develop practices and collaboration in nursing care, valid instruments that measure competencies in patient safety are needed.

To identify instruments that measure the patient safety competencies of nurses.

A scoping review.

The Cochran Library, Epistemonikos, Eric, Ovid Medline, CINAHL, Embase and Web of Science databases were searched for articles reporting on instruments measuring patient safety competence in nursing. The search was limited to English peer-reviewed scientific papers published from January 2010 to April 2021.

A blinded selection of articles fulfilling the inclusion criteria was performed by two researchers based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews. Data were then extracted, synthesised and presented in tables and text.

Our search identified 1,426 papers, of which 32 met the inclusion criteria. The selected papers described nine instruments, of which the 'Health Professional Education in Patient Safety Survey' was the most used instrument. The identified instruments comprised domains for patient safety skills, attitudes, knowledge, communication, teamwork and errors. The instruments had been tested for content (face) and construct validity as well as for reliability. However, sensitivity and responsiveness were rarely assessed.

Over the last decade, there has been a growing body of instruments aimed at measuring patient safety competencies among nurses. The future development of new instruments should consider including the important dimension of ethics in patient safety as well as evaluating the instrument's responsiveness to be able to track changes over time.