Introduction:

Nurses play an essential role in the prevention and treatment of diabetic foot ulcers, so it is important that they are trained to achieve up-to-date knowledge. Appropriate and reliable tools to measure knowledge are useful for planning training programmes.

Objective:

To develop and obtain the psychometric properties of a new scale to measure nurses’ knowledge of diabetic foot ulcers prevention and treatment.

Methodology:

A first phase of item development and content validation by an expert panel. A second phase with a survey of a sample of 500 nurses in Colombia working in hospitals or wound clinics. Analysis using Rasch models and assessment of construct validity by a test of known groups.

Results:

The initial 48-item version of the scale showed adequate content validity. The survey and Rasch analysis resulted in the final version with 35 items (CUPD-35) with good fit indices and high reliability (0.97). The mean knowledge score of this sample of nurses was 28.2 (80.2% of the maximum score), which means a good level of knowledge.

Conclusions:

The CUPD-35 scale is a reliable and valid tool for measuring knowledge of diabetic foot ulcers in Spanish-speaking nurses.

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