Psychometric testing of the nurse professional competence scale Arabic version: An exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses

Aim: To translate the Nurse Professional Competence Scale-Short Form English version into Arabic and psychometrically validate its properties among Saudi citizen nurses.

Background: Evaluating nurses' professional competence is vital in delivering safe, cost-effective care and developing healthcare systems. However, psychometrically reliable and validated nurse competence scales in Arabic-speaking countries remain scant.

Design: A descriptive cross-sectional design adhering to the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology guidelines.

Methods: Participant nurses (n = 598) were conveniently recruited from four government-owned hospitals and completed the Arabic-translated 35-item Nurse Professional Competence Scale-Short Form. We used Spearman's rank-order correlation, exploratory factor analysis, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test, and confirmatory factor analysis to analyze the data.

Results: After exploratory factor analysis and reliability analyses, several items of the Arabic-translated 35-item Nurse Professional Competence Scale-Short Form were omitted due to high inter-item correlations and low factor loading difference. The Arabic version of the Nurse Professional Competence Scale-Short Form was reduced to 21 items, consisting of a three-factor structure: Professional Care Pedagogics, Holistic Value-Based Care, and Direct Nursing Care. Results also demonstrated that the revised three-factor structure had good overall scale reliability, good subscale internal consistencies, and acceptable construct validity using the confirmatory factor analysis.

Conclusion: The 21-item Nurse Professional Competence Scale-Short Form Arabic version is a useful scale, having demonstrated construct validity and reliability. Therefore, nurse managers in Arabic-speaking nations could assess their nurses' professional competence using the 21-item Nurse Professional Competence Scale-Short Form Arabic version to develop proactive programs that enhance professional competence.