Development of a reliable nurse anesthesia clinical instructor evaluation instrument

The purpose of this research was to develop and test a standardized instrument for clinical nurse anesthesia faculty evaluation. Twenty-eight instructor behaviors had been previously identified by a sample of nurse anesthesia students, employing the critical incident technique. Behaviors were grouped into five domains using a logical criterion method: involvement/receptivity, professional competence, teaching practices, evaluation practices, and personal characteristics. The clinical instructor evaluation instrument (CIEI) employed behaviors as items and used a five-point Likert adjective rating scale which identified the degree to which an instructor exhibited particular behaviors. Rating scales ranged from 1 (almost never) to 5 (almost always). The CIEI was tested on U.S. Air Force nurse anesthesia students, who indicated that the standardized form was understandable and that the frequency-of-behavior scale could discern the best from the worst instructors. Application of the CIEI with U.S. Army nurse anesthesia students was conducted to determine the reliability of the developed instrument. Results detected statistically significant differences among 28 behaviors and 46 clinical instructors and produced a reliability coefficient of .935. Potential uses of the CIEI are discussed.