Exploring registered nurses’ attitudes towards post graduate education in Australia-instrument development

Abstract

Background: Nursing education is designed to prepare competent nurses to meet the current and future health care needs of society. Changes to nursing education, especially at post graduate level, will therefore likely be influenced by the on-going developments in healthcare and socio-economic factors. Objective:The primary objective of this study is to develop and validate an instrument that explores the beliefs of Registered Nurses about Postgraduate education in the context of specialist nursing practice in Australia (specialty education). Methods:The Nurses' Attitudes Towards Post Graduate Education (NATPGE) instrument was sent to an expert panel to undertake judgment-quantification (content validity testing). Content Validity Index (CVI) based on expert ratings of relevance was used as a method of quantifying content validity for the NATPGE instrument. A convenience sample of 25 registered nurses was selected from four major Queensland tertiary hospitals to assess the face validity of the instrument. A random sample of 100 registered nurses from the Nurses and Midwives e-Cohort Study (NMeS) were invited to participate in test-retest procedures to assess the reliability of NATPGE overtime. The instrument was administered at two different time points, 3 weeks apart, under similar conditions.Results: Content and face validity was assessed using descriptive statistics. For the test-retest reliability, data were analysed on an item by item basis to calculate the intra-rater reliability using the weighted kappa (k w ) statistic. The NATPGE instrument attained moderate test-retest reliability. 80% of the items on the instrument reached a fair to moderate agreement between the test and retest. Conclusions:There is a need for development of a robust psychometric instrument to explore Registered Nurses' Attitudes Towards Post Graduate Education (NATPGE) and this research is the first step in addressing this need.

Exploring factors affecting registered nurses' pursuit of postgraduate education in Australia

“…The NATPGE instrument consists of five demographic questions and 14 attitude items (Ng et al ., 2014b). Participants were asked to read each of the randomly ordered items and indicate the extent to which they agreed each item applied to them on a five‐point Likert type scale (1 = strongly agree, 2 = agree, 3 = disagree, 4 = strongly disagree, 5 = unsure).…”

“…The first phase included using an established methodology consisting of a comprehensive literature review to generate an item pool for the Nurses' Attitudes Towards Postgraduate Education (NATPGE) instrument ((DeVellis, ; Ng et al ., 2014a). Validity and reliability testing of that instrument was undertaken and has previously been published (Ng et al ., 2014b). The second phase involved a population study to explore the factors influencing postgraduate education using the NATPGE instrument.…”

Nursing and Midwifery Education: Historical Perspectives

“…Transfer of specialty postgraduate nursing education from hospitals to higher education began in the early to late 1990s. Even in specialty education, international variations exist (Marshall 2019) in addition to questions about poorly reported practice and patient impacts of postgraduate education (Gullick et al 2019;Ng et al 2014). Most post-registration education in critical care existed as ad-hoc training for nurses and doctors together until the 1960s, when more formalized post-registration education was developed in Australia and the UK (Marshall 2019).…”