Development of an instrument to measure effectiveness of clinical instructors

Evaluation of clinical instructors by their students is an important issue in nursing education. This study describes the outcome of the development of a method by which nursing students can evaluate their clinical instructors with a reliable and valid instrument. The instrument was developed using characteristics from the literature, which were rated in importance by students, faculty, and new graduates. The ratings are then subjected to statistical analysis using frequency, means, alpha coefficient, and item-to-total correlation and expert assessment to provide reliability and validity for the instrument and to aid in reducing the original list of 50 characteristics to a more usable number of 27. The instrument is pilot tested once with students rating clinical faculty. Results from the pilot are provided.