Assessing non-technical skills in undergraduate nursing students: a validation study

Objectives: Non-technical skills (NTS) are fundamental to the nursing profession to ensure safe, quality care. Purpose: The aim of this study was to develop a new instrument to assess NTS among nursing students: the Non-Technical Skills Student Evaluation (NTS-SE) tool. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted to test the psychometric properties of the tool. A number of 1,087 nursing students were enrolled from five Bachelor Schools of Nursing. Results: Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis suggested the suitability of a two-factor model. The final version of the NTS-SE consisted of 23 items distributed in two domains: cognitive skills and interpersonal skills. For each domain, Cronbach's alpha coefficients were above 0.94. There were significant differences in scores between second- and third-year students (p<0.001) and among the different nursing schools (p<0.001). Conclusions: The NTS-SE can be useful when assessing the effect of educational strategies and/or clinical traineeship experiences on the acquisition of NTS.