Validation of the index for the core competence of nurses leading discharge planning for older patients in China

Abstract Objective With the continuous advancement of aging in China, the number of older inpatients has increased sharply. Older patients have a high demand for planning their discharge services. Nurses serve as the leader of discharge planning for patients; there is a lack of reliable evaluation tool to evaluate the core competitiveness of nurses who implement discharge planning for older patients in China. The purpose of this study was to validate the index for the core competence of nurses who lead discharge planning for older patients developed by a project team through the Delphi method in the early stage. Methods A cross-sectional questionnaire survey with 3-stage stratified sampling was used to select 1075 nurses from 17 public general hospitals in Ningxia, China. Results The index consists of 4 first-level indicators, 13 second-level indicators, and 57 third-level indicators. The results show that 57 third-level indicators had good discrimination. With exploratory factor analysis (EFA), 4 common factors that explained 72.79% of the total variance were extracted. The Cronbach’s α was 0.98, and the retest reliability within a 14-d interval was 0.86. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) results show that the fit of the index structure was good. The criterion validity was 0.73. Conclusions The index presented excellent psychometric properties and can be used to measure the core competence of nurses in implementing discharge planning for older patients in China.