A number of educational programs have focused on promoting the knowledge of asthma to health care professionals, but have not focused on teaching competency. Increasing the cognition of self-efficacy on patient teaching could enhance the competency in teaching for patients with asthma. However, we do not have an appropriate tool to measure self-efficacy on asthma teaching for health care providers. Chiang and colleagues evaluated construct validity by factor analysis and investigating dimensionality by Rasch analysis of a self-efficacy on asthma teaching scale (SEATs) among nurses in Taiwan. A total of 281 nurses from three medical centers volunteered to participate and complete the SEATs. A 20-item SEATs was developed including self-efficacy of general teaching and self-efficacy of specific asthma-related teaching. Instrument reliability and validity are examined by classical testing theory (item analysis, internal consistency, content validity, and construct validity). To examine whether each item in the SEATs fits the unidimensionality in the Rasch model, the Winsteps program was used to assess item difficulty, scale unidimensionality, item separation, and linearity. The results showed that the SEATs have good content validity, internal consistency, and construct validity. Rasch analysis revealed that three items were problematic and need to be re-examined in further study.

WHAT THE STUDY MAY MEAN TO YOU AS A HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL. The authors concluded that the first version of SEATs had an acceptable psychometric property to evaluate the asthma-teaching efficacy of nurses, although three items were problematic according to Rasch analysis. A different population of nurses should be recruited to further refine this tool. SEATs could be used as an outcome measure for further program evaluation.

WHAT THE STUDY MAY MEAN TO YOU AS A PATIENT: Having self-efficacy that you can perform self-management skills is integral to the performance and maintenance of self-management skills. Even though this scale was developed for assessing asthma-teaching efficacy of nurses, it is important that you be evaluated with a scale developed that has proven reliability and validity. That was demonstrated with a sample of nurses in this investigation.

LC Chiang et al. Developing a scale to measure self-efficacy on asthma teaching for health care providers. Journal of Asthma, 200;46:113-117.