The development of self - assessment community nurse 's professional competency scale

Objective To develop a quantitative tool for self- assessment the professional competence of community nurses,selfexpectations and the educational needs.Methods With reference to Taiwan's scale “ professional competence of public health nurses and the education needs”,and community health promotion model as the theoretical framework,a quantitative scale including 4 dimensions consisting of 35 items was developed.A sample of 72 community nurses were conducted to test the reliability and validity.Results The internal consistency reliability was 0.89.The factor analysis confirmed the construct validity for the scale.Conclusions The validity and the reliability of the scale are acceptable and it can be used to assess professional competence of community nurses,self- expectations and the educational needs. Key words: Community nursing;  Scale;  Reliability;  Validity