Want to Graduate Clinicians Who Care? A Caring Behavior Scale for Healthcare Students (S740)

Abstract

Objectives Discuss the importance of incorporating a caring behavior measuring instrument into palliative care education. Summarize the process of developing an instrument. Describe the psychometric properties of The Caring Behavior Scale. Background. Caring is the core and essence of quality humanized care. However, caring and other affective objectives receive little to no attention in healthcare education compared with the current emphasis on the acquisition of technical skills. A valid and reliable tool to measure caring behaviors of healthcare students could help cultivate and motivate their caring behaviors. However, no caring behaviors measuring instrument is currently available that is designed from an educational perspective. Research Objective. The development and the psychometric evaluation of an instrument to measure healthcare students’ caring behaviors. Methods. The study consisted of two phases and five steps. The first phase was concerned with the development of content domains and items, while the second phase focused on the initial psychometric evaluation and data analysis of the scale. In phase I, content domains were defined based on a qualitative study conducted by the researcher to examine the meaning of caring for patients in Egypt. Scale items were generated, the instrument content validity was evaluated, and the instrument was pretested. In phase II, the instrument was used to measure the caring behaviors of 112 nursing students. The derived data was used in the factor analysis to determine construct validity. Results. The scale was proved to be valid with a CVI (Content Validity Index) of 0.97 and showed high internal consistency reliability with a Cronbach’s alpha of .93. The resulting scale consists of 28 items in three subscales. Subscale I: ‘‘Having a relationship as a human being/Presencing,’’ subscale II: ‘‘Preserving patient’s dignity’’ & subscale III: ‘‘Comforting.’’ Conclusions. The Caring Behavior Scale is a reliable and valid instrument to measure caring behaviors of healthcare students. Implications. Further research is needed to accumulate evidence for the validity and reliability of the scale. Incorporating the scale into undergraduate healthcare education and ongoing behavioral training of healthcare professionals could help promote the perception of patients and their families of the quality of clinicians’ caring behaviors.