Psychometric properties of the nursing critical thinking in clinical practice questionnaire in clinical nurse educators

Abstract

The Nursing Critical Thinking in Clinical Practice Questionnaire is an instrument designed to measure the critical thinking capacity of nurses working in clinical areas. However, there is little existing research on the potential applications of this instrument specifically in clinical nurse educators involved in the training of university nursing students. Therefore, we used a descriptive cross-sectional design to examine the psychometric properties of the questionnaire in clinical nurse educators. We evaluated the construct and convergent validity, assessed the reliability of the questionnaire, and performed a confirmatory factor analysis. A total of 639 clinical nurse educators took part in this study. Results of the Confirmatory Factor Analysis showed a good fit to the model (CFI 0.97, NFI: 0.95). The total Cronbach's alpha was 0.97. The four factors had an internal consistency > 0.7. The interclass correlation coefficient values were 0.78 [95% CI 0.75-0.81] for the whole instrument and 0.70-0.75 for the various dimensions, and all were statistically significant at p < 0.05. These findings suggests that the Nurse Critical Thinking in Practice Questionnaire is a useful tool for measuring critical thinking levels in clinical nurse educators. This enhances the knowledge of all agents involved in the learning process, making it easier to implement in clinical practice. Clinical Trial Registration: This study was prospectively registered at the two Institutional review boards.