The development and validation of the Person-centred Practice Inventory-Student instrument: A modified Delphi study.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Global health care policy and regulatory requirements indicate that nursing students must be prepared for person-centred practice. Despite this, there is no evidence of a theoretically derived instrument to measure students' perceptions of person-centred practice. OBJECTIVES: To adapt the Person-centred Practice Inventory-Staff instrument for use with healthcare students and to test the adapted instrument. DESIGN: This study involved a two-phased, modified Delphi Technique. In Phase 1 students' views about items in the Person-centred Practice Inventory-Staff were explored to gain consensus about items for inclusion in an adapted student version. In Phase 2, the psychometric properties of the adapted instrument were tested. SETTING: A UK university. PARTICIPANTS: Pre-registration nursing students. METHODS: Phase 1 involved an iterative process including three focus groups (n = 13) followed by Delphi surveys (Round 1 n = 382; Round 2 n = 144). Thematic analysis was used to analyse students' comments and consensus percentages were calculated after each Delphi round. Phase 2 involved a survey using the adapted instrument (n = 532). The measurement model was analysed using confirmatory factor analysis. RESULTS: The results indicated stability in the measurement model with this sample. Item correlation scores were between 0.22 and 0.74 with no evidence of collinearity and factor loadings ranged from 0.44-0.86. Fit indices indicated goodness of fit between the observed data and the respective domains in the Person-centred Practice Framework (chi-squared to degrees of freedom ratio of <3, root mean square estimations of approximation 0.06 for all domains and between 0.05 and 0.07 at 90% confidence interval. Comparative fit index estimates ranged from 0.90-0.97). CONCLUSION: This study provides initial validation of the Person-centred Practice Inventory-Student instrument which is offered as a measure of students' perceptions of their person-centred practice. The instrument has utility in assessing the efficacy of curricula in preparing students as person-centred practitioners.