Development and Validation of a Self-Perception Tool for Measuring Nurse Managers' Crisis Leadership

During crises, nurse managers' leadership can significantly affect the quality of nursing care. Therefore, we aimed to develop a crisis leadership tool for nursing managers. This study involved nurse managers from 34 hospitals in South Korea. The crisis leadership tool was developed by reviewing the relevant literature and existing measurement tools. Five factors were identified through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, with confirmatory factor analysis showing goodness of fit (comparative fit index = 0.92, Tucker-Lewis index = 0.91, root mean square error of approximation = 0.07, standardized root-mean-square residual = 0.02). The final tool comprised 28 items across five factors: "crisis management competency" (12 items), "decision-making" (6 items), "collaboration" (4 items), "communication" (3 items), and "building trust" (3 items), all organized on a 5-point Likert scale. The tool's Cronbach's α was 0.96. The crisis leadership tool showed strong psychometric characteristics on four validity scales and high internal reliability. This tool can quantitatively measure the crisis leadership levels of nurse managers and may be useful in future research and practice.