An exploration and analysis of the relative importance of employability skills for undergraduate nursing students as perceived by stakeholders - a mixed methods approach

Background: Current challenges in healthcare environment require nurses to develop and be equipped with transferable employability skills in addition to discipline specific skills. Recently, Higher Education Institutions and healthcare providers have focused on more collaboration and working in partnerships to develop the requisite employability skills in undergraduates. Objective: To identify and develop an employability skills questionnaire as informed by the stakeholders including service users. Methods: A mixed method study using the Delphi technique to develop items of the Employability Skills Questionnaire, and statistics to examine quantitative results. Setting: A modern university in London. Undergraduate nurses, academics, managers in healthcare and service users who regularly use National Health Service participated in the study. Focus groups and Delphi technique was used to obtain the general consensus in the Questionnaire, and surveys to obtain numerical data to establish the reliability of the questionnaire and the differences in the stakeholders‟ responses applying ANOVA. Results: The Delphi technique yielded a consensus of 75% to the Questionnaire. Quantitative findings showed good internal reliability of the Questionnaire and all stakeholders attributed high value to all the items therein. Data indicated that service users play a significant role in identifying undergraduates‟ employability skills as consumers of the healthcare service and gave more weight to the importance of evidence-based information demonstrating their awareness of the importance of evidence-based practice in healthcare. Conclusion: It is crucial that nurses keep abreast of current research to translate research findings into practice and to adapt to different ways of working to improve patient care