title: Psychometric testing of an instrument measuring nurse aides' patient safety attitudes.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To develop and test the patient safety attitude scale-nurse aide (PSAS-NA) scale in measuring nurse aides' attitudes to patient safety and event reporting.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  Although nurse aides are unlicensed personnel, their roles in delivering care can not be ignored. A measure specific to nurse aides is needed.
  
  
  METHODS
  This is a cross-sectional design study. A literature review was conducted to generate items. Content validity, construct validity, convergent/divergent validity and internal consistency were examined. A convenient sample of 213 nurse aides working at two hospital-based long-term care institutions in Taiwan was recruited.
  
  
  RESULTS
  From the initial 61-item scale, a 39-item instrument was retained by principal component analysis (PCA) and four factors were extracted: daily safety practice, organizational safety strategies, event reporting practice and event reporting conflict. Four factors accounted for 51.74% of the total variance. Cronbach's alpha ranged from 0.83 to 0.92. Event reporting conflict was significantly negatively correlated with event reporting practice (r = -0.16, P < 0.05).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The PSAS-NA can be used to assess nurse aides' attitudes to patient safety and event reporting. Health care mangers/supervisors can provide education and training programmes to nurse aides according to the assessment results.
authors: Associate Professor, Department of Nursing, Tzu Chi College of Technology, Hualien, TaiwanHead Nurse, Taipei Veterans General Hospital Yuan-Shan Branch, Yi-Lan, Taiwan.
authors: Shoa-Jen
authors: SJ
authors: Perng
authors: Man-Ling
authors: ML
authors: Yu
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009728:Nursing Assistants; D061214:Patient Safety; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
keywords: Taiwan; even reporting; exploration factor analysis; nurse aides; patient safety