Abstract:
The purposes of this research were to study the factors of perioperative nurses' competencies and the variables which described those major factors. A sample of 1,092 perioperative nurses in governmental hospitals all over the country, who has at least one year of experience were selected. The research instrument was a questionaire consisted of six competencies of perioperative nurse. The reliability of the instrument, calculated by the Cronbach's coefficient alpha, was .98. The data were analysed by Image factoring method with varimax orthogonal rotation. The results were as follows: There were eight significant factors of perioperative nurses' competencies; 1) Perioperative nursing's quality improvement, a major factor of perioperative nurses' competencies, which described by 37 items, can be accounted for 23.7 percent of total variance, 2) Communication, which described by 19 items, can be accounted for 10.3 percent of total variance, 3) Perioperative nursing technique, which described by 16 items, can be accounted for 9.4 percent of total variance, 4) The utilization of nursing process in perioperative nursing practice, which described by 7 items, can be accounted for 4.7 percent of total variance, 5) General management, which described by 10 items, can be accounted for 2.6 percent of total variance, 6) Patient preparation for surgery, which described by 3 items, can be accounted for 2.3 percent of total variance, 7) Ethics and patient advocacy, which described by 5 items, can be accounted for 1.1 percent of total variance, 8) Surgical wound care which described by 2 items, can be accounted for 1.1 percent of total variance. All these factors can accumulated 55.2 percent of the variance