Nurse Spiritual Care Therapeutics Scale: Validation Among Nurses Who Care for Patients With Life-Threatening Illnesses in South Korea.

Abstract

Although clinical and empirical literature documents the variety of spiritual care interventions available to palliative care clinicians, the frequency with which they are provided is rarely and inadequately measured. Given the growing interest in implementing spiritual care across Asia, including South Korea, this study sought to cross-culturally validate the Korean version of the Nurse Spiritual Care Therapeutics Scale (NSCTS-K), a scale initially developed in the United States. The World Health Organization process for cross-cultural adaptation of scales and Polit and Yang's process for evaluating validation were implemented. With data from a sample of 252 Korean nurses providing care to patients with life-threatening illnesses, various statistical procedures for evaluating validity and reliability were applied during this cross-sectional, observational study. Exploratory factor analysis for the structural validity of the Korean scale generated 3 factors that accounted for 69.40% of the variance. The Cronbach α was 0.95. The NSCTS-K is one of the few scales available to determine the impact of nurse-provided spiritual care frequency on patient outcomes. Thus, this tool can quantify the frequency of spiritual care better and be used in quality improvement initiatives or palliative care research.