Development and Psychometric Testing of the Gerontological Nursing Clinical Reasoning Scale.

The assessing and evaluating of quality in nursing care of older adults is important to promise high standard patients' outcomes. Reliable and appropriate instrument measured clinical reasoning skills in gerontological nursing was not readily available. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate the Gerontological Nursing Clinical Reasoning Scale in Thailand. A cross-sectional study was performed with a psychometric evaluation of this new developed scale. A pool of 18 short clinical vignettes composed of 72 items with a 5-response Likert type scale was initially developed in the format of the Script Concordance Test. The Script theory and the hypothetical-deductive theory were applied. The scale development process had six steps, including content validity and reliability assessment. Then, it was tested in 80 participants who were in equal groups of senior nursing students and registered nurses in Phayao province. The construct validity by known group technique was used. Twelve advanced practice nurses who were specialized in gerontological nursing and considered as a panellist group were involved. The scores among groups were compared by using the one-way analysis of variance with a Scheffe's post hoc test. The 14-vignettes the Gerontological Nursing Clinical Reasoning Scale which comprised 47 items was finalized. The findings showed that the panellists, registered nurses, and nursing students had statistical different mean scores. The panellists had the highest scores, followed by the registered nurses, and nursing students, respectively. The Scale had an acceptable level of construct validity and internal consistency and could distinguish clinical reasoning skills among the three groups of nurses sampled. Nursing educators can introduce this scale to measure clinical reasoning in gerontological nursing courses but further testing with other populations is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]