Content Validation of and Evaluation of an Electronic Nursing Process Documentation Form for Usefulness in Low Resource Nigerian Hospitals

Abstract

Introduction: Paper-aided nursing documentation is cumbersome to navigate and requires large spaces for document storage. Electronic nursing process documentation solutions which are optimized to address paper-based documentation inefficiencies are limited in Nigerian hospitals. The Electronic Nursing Process Form (ENPF) is a digital nursing documentation solution designed in 2023.  This study examined the content validity and evaluated the perceived usefulness of the ENPF in seven Nigerian Tertiary Hospitals. Materials and Methods: A multi-facility multi-method design was applied. A panel of nine (9) experts was purposively selected for the content validation process comprising five (5) professors of computer engineering and four (4) professors of nursing science.  The evaluation for perceived usefulness was done by a random sample of 872 nurses who compared the ENPF to the traditional pen and paper approach after using each method for seven days. A content relevance checklist, the Perceived Usefulness Scale, and a feedback form were used for data collection. Results: On validation, the Agreement Index between experts (Content Validity Index) was 87.5%. The ENPF was perceived to have better usefulness than paper-aided documentation (3.46 vs. 3.03, p < 0.001). No significant associations were found between perceived usefulness of the ENPF and age, job experience, or academic qualification (p > 0.05). Conclusion: The ENPF had acceptable validity and perceived usefulness than paper-aided documentation. The ENPF is potentially useful in streamlining nursing documentation if deployed in low resource Nigerian Hospitals after large scale trials.