Core nursing competency assessment tool for graduates of outcome‐based nursing education in South Korea: A validation study.

Aim: To develop a competency assessment instrument for nurses who have completed an outcome‐based educational program based on national standards and to assess the content‐, construct‐, and criterion‐related validity of that instrument. Methods: In the development stage, the competencies of nurses with 1–3 years' clinical experience after the completion of nursing education and training programs, based on national standards, were identified. A systematic literature review was conducted to derive the competencies in addition to the 12 national standard competencies. In the evaluation stage, the content‐, construct‐, and criterion‐related validity of the developed tool were verified. For verification of the content validity at each stage, the participants were 10 nurse managers of general hospitals and 10 nurse professors. A factor analysis was conducted to assess the construct validity and the Cronbach's alpha coefficients and item‐total correlation were used to assess the reliability of the developed scale. For the factor analysis, the participants were 141 nurses with 1–3 years' clinical experience who were recruited from four general hospitals. In order to evaluate the construct‐ and criterion‐related validity, the correlations between a nursing performance measurement scale, a self‐leadership tool, and the developed scale were examined. Results: A competency assessment instrument, consisting of 19 items on a 4‐point scale, was developed and validated for assessing the competencies among nurses with 1–3 years' experience. Conclusions: Nursing research, policy awareness, and leadership competencies were required by the Korean Accreditation Board of Nursing Education for nursing college graduates, but were removed due to poor content validity, indicating a need for nursing professionals to bridge the gap between educational standards in nursing colleges and clinical settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]