A Study of Nurse Anesthetists’ Competency, In Tertiary Hospitals under the ministry of public health, Using the Delphi Technique

Abstract

The purpose of this descriptive research was to identify the competencies of nurse anesthetists working in tertiary care hospitals under the Ministry of Public Health. The study employed the Delphi technique 3 rounds and interview involved 19 experts with knowledge and experience in anesthesiology. The research process consisted of three steps: (1) interviewing experts to gather data on nurse anesthetist competencies, (2) analyzing the interview content to develop a questionnaire for experts to assess the importance of each competency, and (3) calculating the median and interquartile range and then distributed the questionnaire to the same group of experts for confirmation or revision of their responses. The final results were used to identify the core competencies of nurse anesthetists in tertiary care hospitals. The findings revealed seven competency domains: 1. Specialized Clinical Nurse Anesthesia Practice (27 items), 2. Anesthetic Drug Management (10 items), 3. Anesthesia Safety and Risk Management (14 items), 4. Communication and Coordination in Patient Care (7 items), 5. Leadership and Technology Utilization (12 items), 6. Quality Improvement in Nurse Anesthesia Practice (8 items), and 7. Ethics and Legal Issues (5 items). The study comprised 83 items, with median values ranging from 4.59 – 4.75 and interquartile ranges between 0.25 and 0.57 these findings suggest that nurse administrators should play a vital role in fostering competency development and implementing performance evaluation of nurse anesthetist, in order to enhance their professional competencies across all dimentions. These competencies can serve as guidelines for administrators in performance evaluation and development of nurse anesthetists and as essential input for curriculum development by the Royal College of Anesthesiologists of Thailand and other training institutions for nurse anesthetists.