Development and Psychometric Testing of Two Tools to Assess Nurse Practitioners' Provision of Spiritual Care

The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate the psychometric properties of two tools measuring the frequency nurse practitioners (NPs) assess for spiritual need and provide spiritual interventions. Spiritual care provided by NPs has the potential to improve health indicators without increasing costs.

Survey design

Concept analysis of the literature supported each item developed for the new assessment and intervention tools. Content validity was tested with six subject matter experts using Lawshe's method of content validity ratios (CVR). Inter-item correlations further supported convergent and divergent validity of the items with 133 practicing NPs. Cronbach's alpha supported internal consistency of the tools and subscales.

CVR analysis provided data supporting revision of the original tools. Convergent and divergent validity were also supported for each item. Both the assessment and intervention tools had high Cronbach's alpha's that met the required 0.70 for the entire scale and subscales.

Both tools and their subscales showed evidence of validity and reliability. Continued research to refine the tools is needed.

The tools can be valuable for assessing NP practice regarding spiritual care within relationship-based and patient centered care.