Objectives: Evaluate the psychometric properties of the Dutch version of the Health Professional Education in Patient Safety Survey (H-PEPSSDutch), an instrument used to assess self-efficacy regarding patient safety competence.
Methods: The H-PEPSSDutch was administered to 610 students in two Belgian nursing schools. We used confirmatory factor analysis, for both classroom and clinical learning, to examine the psychometric properties.
Results: The analysis of construct validity showed a good fit to the hypothesised models. Cronbach's alpha values ranged from 0.70 to 0.87 for classroom learning and from 0.56 to 0.86 for clinical learning, indicating good reliability. Differentiating between the H-PEPSS constructs in the clinical setting showed to be complicated; hence, discriminant validity was not supported for all dimensions.
Conclusions: Overall, this provides us with a reliable instrument to measure self-reported patient safety competence among nursing students. Further research is needed to validate the H-PEPSS as a longitudinal monitoring tool and as a pre-and-post measurement on the impact of interventions related to patient safety in the nursing curricula.