Quality of nursing care: instrument development and validation

Area of Science:

• Nursing
• Healthcare Quality
• Psychometrics

Background:

• Measuring nursing care quality is crucial for patient outcomes.
• Existing tools may not fully capture nurses' perceptions of quality-contributing activities.
• A validated instrument is needed to assess these perceptions effectively.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a scale measuring nurses' perception of activities contributing to nursing care quality.
• To establish the psychometric properties of the newly developed scale.
• To provide a reliable tool for assessing nursing care quality from the nurses' perspective.

Main Methods:

• Methodological study involving literature review, expert opinions, and investigator experience.
• Development of a 25-item instrument across six dimensions, initially.
• Application of the questionnaire to 775 nurses in Portugal, followed by exploratory factor analysis and internal consistency assessment.

Main Results:

• Factor analysis necessitated scale adjustment, resulting in seven dimensions with the same 25 items.
• The revised scale demonstrated high internal consistency, with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.940.
• The final instrument exhibited adequate psychometric properties.

Conclusions:

• The developed scale possesses adequate psychometric properties for measuring nurses' perceptions of nursing care quality.
• The validated scale is suitable for use in future research and healthcare quality improvement initiatives.
• This tool can enhance the understanding of factors influencing nursing care quality.