Development of a Scale for Practical Competence Assessment of Occupational Health Nurses in Contracted Industrial Health Agencies for Primary Mental Health Prevention

Abstract

Occupational health nurses in contracted industrial health agencies are expected to provide small- and medium-sized companies with high-quality health promotion activities, primarily in terms of mental health prevention, in terms of the implementation of these health activities, practical competence is required to not only build support systems in the workplace, but in the affiliated agencies as well. This study aimed to develop a self-assessment scale of practical competence of occupational health nurses working in contracted industrial health agencies primarily aimed at the prevention of mental health problems. A draft scale was prepared based on previous qualitative research and results obtained via literature reviews. A questionnaire survey was administered to 555 occupational health nurses from 111 facilities in order to verify the validity and reliability of the scale. Exploratory factor analysis of the responses from the 169 nurses, using maximum likelihood estimation and promax rotation, was performed. As a result, 26 items across the following four factors were identified: "the ability to operate a chain of health promotion activities in accordance with the policies and needs of workplaces," "the ability to consolidate partnerships with workplaces," "the ability to maintain the foundation of health promotion activities of the affiliated agency," and "the ability to draw support needs from workers." After confirmatory factor analysis was performed, and which resulted in the removal of four items, the resulting 22 items (across the four factors) had goodness of fit indices as follows: GFI = 0.874, AGFI = 0.838, CFI = 0.962, and RMSEA = 0.050. The developed scale appeared to have certain levels of reliability and validity in its use as a scale for the practical competence assessment of occupational health nurses working in contracted industrial health agencies primarily aimed at preventing mental health problems. Thus, the scale can be used as a self-assessment tool that can help occupational health nurses working in contracted industrial health agencies to review their daily activities.