Use of Simulation to Develop a Medication Administration Safety Assessment Tool

Abstract

BackgroundThis pilot study describes the use of human patient simulation (HPS) to develop a performance-based competency measure of medication administration safety. MethodThe instrument was developed using a content-validity approach and pilot tested through independent raters (n = 4) evaluating student nurse research participant (n = 14) performance in the HPS. Rating accuracy was evaluated using three HPS-based standard performances. ResultsUsing four raters, interrater reliability was 0.83 to 0.90, Cronbach's alpha was 0.90, and the rating accuracy averaged 95%. ConclusionsHPS provides unique features to facilitate development of performance-based clinical measures. These include an ability to test the measure on both high-consequence behaviors (such as medication errors) and “standard” performances with predetermined errors.