The Development of Taiwanese Disaster Nursing Core Competencies and Preparedness Assessment Tool: a Three-Year Project.

The risks of encountering all types of disasters and the level of impact of those disasters of Taiwan are top-ranked in the world, in responding to all phases of disasters, nurses play a vital role. Disaster nursing core competencies provide the foundations for the provision of disaster nursing care and the implementation of disaster nursing education. Although Taiwan Nurses Association have developed disaster nursing framework, content and strategies for all phases of disaster nursing care, no core competencies and correspondent assessment tool of disaster nursing were developed. This three-year study with threefold purposes are detailed below. First year: develop Taiwanese disaster nursing competencies. Three phases to accomplish purpose one. Phase one: nurses who had involved in domestic and international disaster nursing care will attend qualitative focus group discussion for inducing essential core competencies of disaster nursing derived from their disaster nursing care experiences. Phase two: disaster experts from the fields of medicine, fire safety, sociology, law, culture, and media attend qualitative focus group discussion for understanding core competencies of nurses those experts recognize or expect in disaster nursing care. Phases three: two rounds of focus group discussion will take place to review Taiwanese disaster nursing core competencies that are developed in phase one and two. Participants of phase three round one include hospital and non-hospital nurses. Hospital nurses are from medical, surgical, obstetric, gynecological, pediatric, psychological, and intensive care units; non-hospital nurses are from community, clinic, long-term care facilities, school, and factories. Date derived from three phases of focus group discussions will conclude the Taiwanese disaster nursing core competencies from different dimensions. Second year: develop disaster nursing core competencies preparedness assessment tool. In the integration of first year focus group discussion results, disaster nursing core competencies of ICN and other countries, Taiwanese disaster nursing framework, education content, and strategies; a Delphi method will be adopted; three rounds of expert reliability and validity test with 18 disaster experts who participated in the first and second focus group of first year will be conducted for reviewing, revising, and developing the Taiwanese disaster nursing core competencies preparedness assessment tool. Five disaster nursing experts will check content reliability and expert validity of this assessment tool. A pilot study with 20 nurses is conducted, results will be examined for the recheck of reliability and validity as well the content revision of the final version of the assessment tool. Third year: test the effectiveness of assessment tool on the evaluation of disaster nursing education. Research purpose three is to carry out a psychometric test on 400 nurses to test the effectiveness of this tool on the preparedness assessment after the disaster nursing continuing education.