Ageing hospital nurses' well-being at work: psychometric testing of the Dignity and Respect in Ageing Nurses' Work...

Valid and reliable methods to measure nurses' well-being at work as a positive phenomenon are needed. Factors promoting well-being at work need to be identified, which would enable targeting interventions and development in nursing work in an appropriate manner. Due to dissimilarity of many areas of nursing work and unique features of every age group, specialized and aligned scales are needed. The aim of this article is to describe a study to develop and test the psychometric properties of the Dignity and Respect in Ageing Nurses' Work Scale (DRANWS). A sample of 328 ageing Finnish hospital nurses in the first phase (response rate 55%) and 285 nurses in the second phase (response rate 48%) responded to the scale. Content validity was assessed by expert evaluation. Exploratory factor analysis was used to assess construct validity. Reliability (internal consistency) was assessed by Cronbach's alpha coefficient. The DRANWS consists of 72 items and three dimensions: (1) nurse-nurse interaction (cohesion, feeling of freedom in work community, giving and receiving assistance and support, nurses' status at work, perceiving one's work as meaningful, being together with other nurses, nurses working in pairs), (2) nurse-patient interaction (patient satisfaction, well-conducted nursing, encountering patients and helping them) and (3) nursing-centredness (provision of good care to patients, putting the patient first, appreciation of nursing). Cronbach's alphas ranged from 0.74 to 0.96 in the first phase and from 0.79 to 0.98 in the second phase, demonstrating the internal consistency of scale to be high. Content validity was good based on expert evaluations. Construct validity of the scale was also very good based on factor analysis. In conclusion, the DRANWS is a reliable and valid scale to measure well-being at work of ageing hospital nurses focusing on dignity and respect.