Adapting "the Staff Attitudes to Nutritional Nursing Care scale" to geriatric nursing care

A positive attitude is assumed to be important in nursing staff's help and support of elderly people during meals. As there is no specific tool for measuring staff's attitudes regarding important issues within eating and nutrition, the SANN (Staff Attitudes to Nutritional Nursing Care) scale was developed. The scale was developed and tested in nursing staff working at resident homes, and the number of items was reduced from 63 to 19 with five underlying factors. The aim of this study was to describe how the SANN scale was adapted and tested in nursing staff working in different types of elderly care.

The raw 63-item version went through minor changes, and one unclear worded item was excluded. The changed raw 62-item version was answered by 188 nursing staff working at six hospital care clinics and 64 staff working at one resident home.

The analysis reduced the 62 items to 18, and the adapted scale was named the SANN-G scale, G standing for "geriatric care". A rotated factor analysis gave a five-factor solution, explaining 54% of the variance. The scale achieved good internal reliability, with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.83. Fourteen items fulfilled inclusion criteria in both the SANN and the SANN-G scales.

The SANN-G scale is practicable for use in staff working in different types of elderly care. It can be used to explore existing attitudes and identify areas with a low degree of prevailing positive attitudes as well as to evaluate whether and how attitudes change after nutritional education and intervention.