Objective      To develop a rating scale for evaluating the patient safety competency for nurses.       Methods      Based on our overall review on domestic and international literature

the scale was formulated through 2 cycles of expert evaluation and pre-testing on evaluation

modification and screening on relative items. A total of 791 nurses from 3 Grade A Class III hospitals were recruited to test the reliability and validity of the scale.       Results      Our produced rating scale for patient safety competency contained 29 items. Four factors were extracted by exploratory factor analysis and corresponded well with the theoretical construction. Factor loading ranged from 0.471 to 0.817 and the 4 factors explained for 64.598% variances. The correlation coefficients of each factor and the total scores were from 0.619 to 0.822. The correlation coefficients of each factors were 0.242~0.519. The total scores were significant higher in the nurses after training than the un-training group (P0.01). The Cronbach’s α of the total scale was 0.930

with its retest-reliability of 0.945. And the Cronbach’s α of the every factors ranged from 0.777 to 0.863

with their retest-reliability from 0.867 to 0.972.       Conclusion      Our newly developed rating scale of patient safety competency has good reliability and validity

and can be used as an effective measurement to test the patient safety competency for nurses.