Development and validation of the Pressure Ulcer Management Self-Efficacy Scale for Nurses (PUM-SES).

BACKGROUND: Pressure ulcers (PUs) represent a current issue for healthcare delivery. Nurse self-efficacy in managing PUs could predict patients' outcome, being a proxy assessment of their overall competency to managing PUs. However, a valid and reliable scale of this task-specific self-efficacy has not yet been developed.

OBJECTIVES: To develop a valid and reliable scale to assess nurses' self-efficacy in managing PUs, i.e. the Pressure Ulcer Management Self-Efficacy Scale for Nurses (PUM-SES).

METHODS: This study had a multi-method and multi-phase design, where study reporting was supported by the STROBE checklist (Supplementary File 1). Phase one referred to the scale development, consisting in the items' generation, mainly based on themes emerged from the literature and discussed within a panel of experts. Phase two focused on a three-step validation process: the first step aimed to assess face and content validity of the pool of items previously generated (initial version of the PUM-SES); the second aimed to assess psychometrics proprieties through exploratory factorial analysis; the third step assessed construct validity through confirmative factorial analysis, while concurrent validity was evaluated describing the relationships between PUM-SES and an established general self-efficacy measurement. Reliability was assessed through the evaluation of stability and internal consistency.

RESULTS: PUM-SES showed evidence of face and content validity, adequate construct and concurrent validity, internal consistency and stability. Specifically, PUM-SES had fours domains, labelled as follow: assessment, planning, supervision, and decision-making. These domains were predicted by the same second-order factor, labelled as PU management self-efficacy.

CONCLUSION: PUM-SES is a 10-item scale to measure nurses' self-efficacy in PU management. A standardized 0-100 scoring is suggested for computing each domain and the overall scale. PUM-SES might be used in clinical and educational research.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: Optimizing nurses' self-efficacy in PU management might enhance clinical assessment, determining better outcomes in patients with PUs. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.