Developmant of A Medical Error Scale for Nursing Students: A Methodological Study

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this study was to develop the Medical Error Scale (MES) for the student nursesMethods: This study was a methodological research. The study was conducted with 662 student nurses to develop a Medical Error Scale for student nurses. The scale development study was carried out in the nursing departments of the health sciences faculty of two universities; one in İstanbul and one in Trabzon. The data were collected with a questionnaire consisting of 6 questions about the demographic characteristics of the students and a draft scale including 94 items. In the analysis of the data, frequency, percentage, mean tests, confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses’ tests were used.Results: Content Validity Index of the scale was 0.82, Cronbach’s Alpha was 0.94, Spearman-Brown was 0.93,Guttman coefficient were 0.92, the upper and lower 27% test was – 44.42 and p=0.000, and item-total item correlation values ranged from 0.36 to 0.68. The scale had seven subscales according to exploratory factor analysis. The results of confirmatory factor analysis were chi-square/degree of freedom 3.01, RMSEA= 0.055, CFI= 0.97, NNFI= 0.97 and NFI= 0.96 and the scale showed a good agreement with the subscales.Conclusion: The scale was a valid and reliable tool to collect data on whether student nurses acted carefully or made medical errors during their patient-related practices.