Development of an Instrument to Measure Nursing Student Teamwork Skills

• Nurses must be able to demonstrate teamwork skills necessary for safe patient care.
• Nurse educators must use psychometrically sound instruments for evaluation.
• An eight-step process can be used to develop valid and reliable instruments.

BackgroundThe purpose of this project was to develop an instrument to measure nursing student teamwork skills in a simulated environment.MethodAn eight-step instrument development process was used that included literature review and evaluation of face/content validity and inter-rater reliability.ResultsPsychometric quantitative analysis of the final 11-item instrument included a scale content validity index of 0.98 and individual item content validity index scores ranging from 0.75 to 1.0 for the 11 items. Inter-rater reliability demonstrated consistency with interclass correlation coefficient of 0.836.ConclusionsAn eight-step process can be used by nurse educators to develop psychometrically sound instruments for use in student evaluation.