Validation of a clinical competence evaluation tool for community service nurses in North West province, South Africa

BACKGROUND: Little has been done to evaluate clinical competence of community service nurses (CSNs) during the 12-month compulsory community service in South Africa. Evaluating clinical competence of CSNs would be of benefit as it might improve quality patient care and promote patient satisfaction. It therefore became of paramount importance for the researcher to establish some method of evaluating the CSNs’ clinical competence during their compulsory service in the North West province (NWP), South Africa. AIM: To evaluate the clinical competence evaluation tool (CCET) for CSNs for reliability and validity. SETTING: A selected regional level 2 hospital. METHODS: Ten experts participated in the validation process. The tool was tested at one of the public hospitals in the NWP and 11 out of 13 CSNs participated in this process. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 25 was employed and the reliability of the tool was measured using Cronbach’s alpha. RESULTS: This tool’s content validity index has exceeded 0.80 and is indicated at 0.98, which reflects excellent content validity. The higher the content validity ratio score the greater the agreement amongst the experts. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients in the six competencies are all greater than 0.7 implying that the tool developed in this study is reliable. All the experts indicated that the tool is clear, simple, general, accessible and important. CONCLUSION: From the above-mentioned results, a CCET for CSNs was proven to be valid and reliable. CONTRIBUTION: This was the first tool to be developed in NWP of South Africa.