Development, initial reliability and validity testing of an observational tool for assessing technical skills of operating room nurses.
BACKGROUND: The recent emergence of the Systems Approach to the safety and quality of surgical care has triggered individual and team skills modules for surgeons and anaesthetists and relevant observational tools have been developed. OBJECTIVE: To develop an observational that captures operating room (OR) nurses' technical and can be used for and . METHODS: The Imperial College Assessment of Technical Skills for Nurses (ICATS-N) assesses (i) gowning and gloving, (ii) setting up instrumentation, (iii) draping, and (iv) maintaining sterility. Three to five observable behaviours have been identified for each and are rated on 1-6 scales. Feasibility and aspects of reliability and validity were assessed in 20 simulation-based management training modules for trainee nurses and doctors, carried out in a Simulated Operating Room. RESULTS: The was feasible to use in the context of simulation-based training. Satisfactory reliability (Cronbach alpha) was obtained across trainers' and trainees' scores (analysed jointly and separately). Moreover, trainer nurse's ratings of the four skills correlated positively, thus indicating adequate content validity. Trainer's and trainees' ratings did not correlate. CONCLUSIONS: Assessment of OR nurses' technical skill is becoming a training priority. The present evidence suggests that the ICATS-N could be considered for use as an assessment/training tool for junior OR nurses.
All data analyses were carried out using SPSS. Reliability assessed via Cronbach’s alpha coefficients.
Simulation
The ICATS-N covers the following core skills:Growing and GlovingSetting up instrumentationDrapingMaintaining sterile field
Twenty trainee OR nurses and two senior OR trainer nurses took part in the studyOn completion of the procedure, trainees also completed ICATS-N to rate their own performance and received feedback on their performance from thetrainer.
develop and test an observational for the of technical in OR nurses.
Small sample sizeInter-rater reliability could not be assesseddifferent properties of the are tested at different times in a sequential manner, not in one sequence.
The was feasible to use in the context of simulation-based .ICATS-N is a aimed to facilitate systematic, transparent of and feedback on OR nurses’ technical skills, both in the OR and in simulation-basedtraining modules.
Ethical approval was obtained for the study and provided by all participants.
development and testing of a to simulate an OR room in a surgical .ICATS-N was tested in the context of surgical crisis simulations. The simulations were carried out in a Simulated Operating Room (SOR) in our hospital.
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