Development of an Ethical Sensitivity Scale for Clinical Nurses

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop and test the validity and reliability of the Ethical Sensitivity Scale for Clinical Nurses (ESSCN).Methods: 40 items for the preliminary instrument of ESSCN were developed through a literature review and deep interviews with 8 clinical nurses. The scale validation was conducted with a convenience sample of 344 nurses recruited from four general hospitals in Busan and the Gyeongnam area. Content validity, construct validity, criterion validity, convergent validity and discriminative validity were used to evaluate the validity. Cronbach’s ⍺ and test-retest were used to evaluate the reliability of ESSCN.Results: The 36-item ESSCN was found to have eight subscales- patient respect, professional ethics, nursing practice responsibilities, willingness to do good, ethical contemplation, ethical burden, perception of ethical situation and empathy- explaining 61.4% of the total variance. The correlation coefficient between ESSCN and the Korean Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire was .52 (<i>p</i><.001). Criterion-related validity was supported by known-group comparison. The Cronbach's ⍺ reliability coefficient was .92 and test-retest reliability coefficient was .89 (<i>p</i><.001).Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that the ethical sensitivity scale is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring ethical sensitivity by clinical nurses.