A Study of Clinical Nurse Supervisor Competencies, Governmental Hospitals

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to study the competencies of clinical nurse supervisors by using the Delphi Technique. The participants were 21 experts with clinical supervision knowledge and experience more than 20 years consisting of three experts in the Federation of Nursing Professions, three directors of nursing departments operating in government hospitals, three professionals who are academic nurses, six head nurses and six advanced practice nurses. The Delphi Technique consisted of three steps. At Step One, all experts were asked to describe the competencies of clinical nurse supervisors. At Step Two, data were analyzed by content analysis to develop a rating scale questionnaire were used to estimate the trends of importance in clinical supervisory nursing competencies. At Step Three, all items were analyzed by using median and interquartile range to develop a new version of the questionnaire then sent to the above experts for confirmation. Data were re-analyzed by median and interquartile range to summarize the competencies of clinical nurse supervisors in government hospitals. The results of the study indicate that the competencies of clinical nurse supervisors in government hospitals consist of the following 6 components, 59 items: 1) Technical and theoretical knowledge (14 items); 2) Skills of clinical supervisors (14 items); 3) Attributes of clinical supervisors (12 items); 4) Clinical teaching (7 items); 5) Communication and relationships (6 items) and 6) Nursing informatics technology (6 items) with a median in the range of 4.50 - 4.76; the interquartile range in the range of 0.25 - 0.82