Nurse educator competence in four European countries—A comparative cross-sectional study

Aim: The aim of this article is to describe and compare the nurse educator competences in four European countries using three different evaluators: nurse educators (n = 329), heads of a nursing subject (n = 60) and student nurses (n = 1058). Design: The study was conducted as a comparative cross-sectional survey in Finland, Malta, Slovakia and Spain between May 2021 and February 2022. Methods: The data were collected with an online survey. The instrument used was a 20-item Tool for Evaluation of Requirements of Nurse Teachers, utilizing a 5-point Likert-type scale. The data were analysed statistically and reported according to STROBE guidelines. Results: Nurse educators' competence evaluated positively in all the groups of evaluators, with a mean of >3.5. The self-evaluation of nurse educators' competence was higher than the other evaluators' evaluations. Having a degree in nursing, having completed some pedagogical studies and longer work experience as a nurse educator had a positive association with higher self-evaluated competence among nurse educators. Conclusions: Nurse educator competence is at a good level in the selected European countries, but further studies are required to find the reasons behind the differences in evaluations. Public Contribution: Each participating educational institution named a contact person who distributed the surveys to the participants and returned the study's metadata to the researchers.