Clergy Knowledge and Attitudes Concerning Faith Community Nursing: Toward a Three-Dimensional Scale

Abstract

Research has described faith community nursing practice, including positive aspects and barriers to practice. Barriers to faith community nursing practice must be identified and addressed to facilitate faith community nursing programs. The primary purpose of this study was to pilot test a newly developed instrument to measure knowledge and attitudes concerning faith community nursing. A survey design was used. The sample included clergy in the United Church of Christ (n=34). An investigator developed survey entitled Knowledge, Attitudes, and Opinions Concerning Faith Community Nursing was administered. Psychometric evaluation of the survey included content validity and internal consistency reliability for each of 3 scales. Coefficient alpha was high, ranging from .88 to .95. The results of the survey indicate that clergy, within the selected Christian denomination, generally have adequate knowledge and positive attitudes about faith community nursing. Knowledge scores on one item indicated some uncertainty among clergy about spiritual counseling as a nursing intervention. A major limitation to this study was the small, homogeneous sample. Future research should include further psychometric evaluation of validity and reliability in a larger, diverse sample. The results of this study indicate that, with further testing, the Knowledge, Attitudes, and Opinions Concerning Faith Community Nursing Survey has the potential to expand assessment of barriers to faith community nursing.