Cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric validation of the Spanish version of the SBAR-LA rubric for structured communication in nursing simulation

TL;DR

This paper validates a Spanish version of the SBAR-LA rubric to assess structured communication skills in nursing students during simulations.

Contribution

The study provides a validated Spanish-language tool for evaluating structured communication in nursing education.

Findings

The Spanish SBAR-LA rubric showed excellent inter-rater reliability with a Krippendorff’s alpha of 0.933.

The rubric has high internal consistency and agreement between raters, confirming its robustness.

The tool is suitable for academic training in structured communication for nursing students.

Abstract

Although the SBAR framework is widely used in clinical and educational settings, there is a lack of validated Spanish-language tools that objectively assess its use by students in simulation. The adaptation and validation of the SBAR-LA rubric address this gap and provide a resource for training and evaluating structured communication.

To conduct the cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric validation of the SBAR-LA rubric in Spanish for assessing structured communication skills in undergraduate nursing students during clinical simulation.

A two-phase cross-sectional psychometric validation study was conducted. Phase one involved cross-cultural adaptation, including forward and backward translation, expert panel review, and cognitive debriefing with nursing students. Phase two assessed inter-rater reliability using Krippendorff’s alpha based on 97 performance evaluations obtained in different simulation scenarios. The SBAR-LA-Sp rubric contains 10 dichotomous items across the four SBAR dimensions.

The Spanish version of the SBAR-LA rubric demonstrated excellent inter-rater reliability, with a Krippendorff’s alpha of 0.933 (95% CI: 0.905–0.956). Internal consistency and agreement between raters were also high, confirming the instrument’s robustness.

The Spanish version of the SBAR-LA rubric provides an objective measure of structured communication in nursing simulation. The findings support its use in academic training. Further research is needed to examine its effect on learning outcomes.

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