The Clinical Competencies of Nurse Anesthetists in Response to Community Needs: A Delphi Study

Introduction: Ensuring the clinical competencies of nurse anesthetists is an essential professional standard. The key and primary step in the assessment of nurse anesthesia educational programs is to understand the essential competencies from the perspective of anesthesia service providers in response to the community needs. This study aimed to determine the clinical competencies of nurse anesthetists for meeting the needs of the community. Materials and Methods: This descriptive survey was based on the classical Delphi method. The study was conducted in three stages. In the first stage, 25 questions were prepared by a non-systematic literature review. In the second and third stages, a list of clinical competencies for nurse anesthetists was determined. For assessing the content validity, two indices of content validity ratio and content validity index were calculated. Data were analyzed by SPSS software (version 16) using descriptive statistics and consensus validity. Results: After analyzing the data in the first stage, one item was removed from the 25 selected items, and 11 items were added to the initial checklist. The maximum and minimum coefficient of agreement was 100 and 0.54, respectively. The findings of the second stage showed that the percentage of agreement in 35 items was at least 70.7 and maximum 95.1. A competence from the education dimension was removed with a percentage of agreement of 0.59 and a total of 34 items were approved. Conclusions: This study determined the clinical competencies of nurse anesthetists. The development of clinical competencies for these nurses could be the starting point for understating, analyzing and planning in order to improve the quality of services provided.