Objective assessment of self-care and non-professional care: a proposal

Nursing care today, both in theory and practice, consists not only of professional care rendered by nurse but, to a significant degree, involves also self-care and non-professional care. This tendency is also reflected in the philosophical premises of Polish Nursing. The interest in self-care and non-professional care in Poland, and, consequently, in the D. Orem's self-care deficit theory of nursing, as well as attempts at their implementation in nursing practice inspired the present attempt to develop a tool for objective assessment of these two types of care. The proposed Scale of Patient's and Care Provider's Agency (SPCPA) allows for the objective assessment of self-care as patient's self-care agency, and of non-professional care as the main care provider's agency measured in points. The aim of this study is to describe the tool and to assess its two psychometric properties: reliability and validity. The results of the statistical testing of the SPCPA show that the tool is capable of assessing precisely both the patient's self care agency and of the main provider's caring agency.