Development and Psychometric Evaluation of “Nursing Talent Identification " Instrument

Abstract

Abstract Background: The human resource of each discipline needs unique talent and individual characteristics based on the philosophy of the field and the professional context. Identifying talented people is critical for maximizing organizational performance. However, no appropriate instrument was found in the related literature which could identify the nursing talent. Hence, the development of an instrument that could identify people with nursing talent is necessary so that the most appropriate people would enter the field of nursing. This could ensure, to a large extent, their job satisfaction and the quality of care provided after their employment. Therefore, due to the lack of conceptual clarity and the gap in the related knowledge on the concept of nursing talent, and the lack of a specific instrument to assess this concept, the present study was conducted to develop and psychometric evaluation of the nursing talent identification. Methods: It was a mixed-methods study with an exploratory sequential design. In the first stage, a qualitative study was conducted to explain the concept of nursing talent with the conventional content analysis approach. For this purpose, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 25 clinical nurses and nursing instructors using the purposive sampling method. In the next step, the tool items were generated using the findings of the qualitative stage and literature review. Then, face validity, content validity (determination of the content validity ratio and content validity index) was evaluated. Also, its construct validity was checked through exploratory factor analysis on 650 first-year nursing students. Convergent validity, internal consistency, and stability (20 first-year nursing students with an interval of 20 days) were evaluated. Findings: Analysis of the qualitative data led to the identification of five categories: "ethicality," "interpersonal communication skills," "psychological strength," "dynamism," and "cognitive abilities." After explaining the concept of nursing talent, the draft of the tool with 95 items in a 5-point Likert scale was designed. After determining the face validity and content validity, there was a tool with 65 items that needed to be checked in terms of construct validity. Exploratory factor analysis indicated the existence of four factors with a total variance of 62.71 which in the form of "dynamic cognitive abilities" with the common variance of 26.23%, "psychological strength" with the common variance of 9.27%, "interpersonal communication skills" with the common variance of 5% and "ethicality" with the common variance of 3.62% were named. There was a significant correlation between the nursing talent identification tool and nurses' competency questionnaire (P ≤0.001 and r = 0.62). Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the final scale with 54 items was calculated to be 0.93, and the intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.97 for the scale.

Conclusion: The results showed that talented individuals must have dynamic cognitive abilities to enter the nursing field and profession to process their thoughts and conduct various mental activities. Also, they must have the psychological strength to cope with difficult career situations effectively. Furthermore, the interpersonal communication skills necessary for effective interaction with others, teamwork spirit, empathy, and altruism with others may be the hallmarks of successful nurses in the nursing profession. Meanwhile, these nurses have a moral orientation in doing the work, and they could identify the situations that require moral sensitivity. The quantitative phase results also showed that the nursing talent instrument has the necessary validity and reliability to measure different dimensions of the nursing talent.