Introduction: The school nurse is a specialized professional who safeguards and promotes students' overall health and academic performance. In schools, the complexity and health needs of students are constantly evolving, and the nurse appears to be a professional capable of meeting these needs.
Aim: This study aims to demonstrate the validity of a novel assessment tool designed to evaluate the perception of the school nurse scope of practice in Italy.
Methods: This research involved three high schools and a nursing program in northern Italy. During the 2019-2020 school year, participants were asked to answer a literature review-based questionnaire. Calculations for the newly developed assessment tool validation were performed.
Results: The sample includes 218 students, 40.4% of whom are from high school and the remainder from nursing school. Regarding the school nurse's skills, both sub-groups demonstrated high levels of agreement. Cronbach's alpha was found to be 0.92 on the scale and varied between 0.85 and 0.91 among the factors with a good sample width (KMO = 0.90). The items met the criteria for item-total correlations and response variability. The factor analysis revealed a two-factor model capable of explaining 62.4% of the variance with no significant differences between the "clinical-cognitive skills" factor with 32.8% and the "interpersonal and educational skills" factor with 29.0%.
Conclusion: This study's findings may be useful for describing the scope of practice of the school nurse, bolstering the quality of services provided by the school, and assisting school nurses in their efforts to improve the health of school communities.