A new scale for disaster nursing core competencies: Development and psychometric testing

Background: All nurses must have core competencies in preparing for, responding to and recovering from a disaster. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), as in many other countries, disaster nursing core competencies are not fully understood and lack reliable, validated tools. Thus, it is imperative to develop a scale for exploring disaster nursing core competencies, roles andbarriers in the KSA.Objectives: This study’s objective is to develop a valid, reliable scale that identifies and explores core competencies of disaster nursing, nurses’ roles in disaster management and barriers to developing disaster nursing in the KSA.Methods: This study developed a new scale testing its validity and reliability. A principal component analysis (PCA) was used to develop and test psychometric properties of the new scale. The PCA used a purposive sample of nurses from emergency departments in two hospitals in the KSA. Participants rated 93 paper-based, self-report questionnaire items from 1 to 10 on a Likertscale. PCA using Varimax rotation was conducted to explore factors emerging from responses.Findings: The study’s participants were 132 nurses (66% response rate). PCA of the 93 questionnaire items revealed 49 redundant items (which were deleted) and 3 factors with eigenvaluesof >1. The remaining 44 items accounted for 77.3% of the total variance. The overall Cronbach’s alpha was 0.96 for all factors: 0.98 for Factor 1, 0.92 for Factor 2 and 0.86 for Factor 3.