Masatoshi Okumura

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the relationship between personality traits and critical care nursing competence among critical care nurses. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY/DESIGN: Multicentre cross-sectional survey using a self-report questionnaire and path modelling, from August 2017 to December 2018. SETTING: Six intensive care units in Japan. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: We assessed relationships among the Big Five personality traits and four critical care nursing competencies in nurses. FINDINGS: We included 211 nurses (77.7% women, 59.2% in their 20 s); 62.6% had 1-5 years' critical care nursing experience. Among the four competencies, principles of nursing care had a direct positive effect on decision-making (0.77, p < 0.001); decision-making had a direct positive effect on collaboration (0.74, p < 0.001) and nursing interventions (0.77, p < 0.001). The personality traits openness to experience, agreeableness, and extraversion had a significantly positive effect (0.17, p < 0.05; 0.43, p < 0.001; 0.29, p < 0.01; respectively) on principles of nursing care, the key competency. The personality trait neuroticism had a direct or indirect negative effect on all four nursing competencies. CONCLUSION: Nursing competence in the critical care setting is affected by personality traits. Our findings can be applied in nursing education to improve competence based on individual personality traits.

BACKGROUND: Critical care nurses need a high level of medical competence, especially with regard to patient safety. There are several tools to measure general and critical care nursing competence, but the usability of these tools is inadequate because they include large numbers of questions. To maintain quality and safety in intensive care units (ICUs), it is necessary to be able to easily measure and evaluate critical care nursing competence. The purpose of this study was to develop an easy-to-use questionnaire assessing critical care nursing competence related to patient safety. METHODS: A cross-sectional, descriptive, explorative study was designed to collect data from nurses working in six ICUs in tertiary hospitals in Japan. Data were collected from August 2017 to December 2018. The Critical Care Nursing Competence Questionnaire for Patient Safety (C3Q-safety) is a 22-item instrument designed to assess nursing competence related to patient safety in ICUs. Items were developed based on previous work related to critical care nursing competence and were adjusted based on a pilot study. RESULTS: A total of 211 nurses working in ICUs participated in this study. Through descriptive statistics and factor analysis, the number of questions was reduced from 24 to 22. The C3Q-safety had four factors: decision making, collaboration, nursing intervention, and principles of nursing care. Cronbach's alpha ranged from 0.73 to 0.83. The four factors showed positive correlations with each other (0.47 to 0.72). Nurses licensed as certified nurses in intensive care and those with longer ICU work experience showed significantly higher scores on all four factors. CONCLUSIONS: We developed an easy-to-use questionnaire to assess critical care nursing competence related to patient safety. The C3Q-safety was able to detect four areas of competence. The C3Q-safety will make it possible to easily measure critical care nursing competence and can be utilized for efficient education.