Nursing Care Interpersonal Relationship Questionnaire: elaboration and validation

Area of Science:

• Nursing
• Psychometrics
• Health Services Research

Background:

• Effective interpersonal relationships are crucial in nursing care, impacting patient outcomes.
• Existing instruments may not fully capture the nuances of nurse-patient interactions.
• The Imogene King's Interpersonal Conceptual Model provides a framework for understanding these relationships.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a psychometrically sound instrument for measuring interpersonal relationships in nursing care.
• To utilize Item Response Theory (IRT) for instrument development and analysis.
• To create a reliable and valid tool for assessing the quality of nursing care interactions.

Main Methods:

• Methodological study employing theoretical, empirical, and analytical psychometric approaches.
• Development of the Nursing Care Interpersonal Relationship Questionnaire based on Imogene King's model.
• Validation using Item Response Theory on a sample of 950 patients across different healthcare levels.

Main Results:

• The final instrument comprises 31 items with high reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.90, McDonald's Omega = 0.92).
• Item Response Theory analysis indicated high discrimination for 28 items.
• A five-level interpretive scale was developed, detailing the progression of interpersonal relationship effectiveness.

Conclusions:

• The developed instrument is reliable and valid for measuring interpersonal relationships in nursing care.
• The questionnaire provides a robust tool for assessing the quality of nurse-patient interactions.
• Findings support the use of IRT in developing and refining nursing care assessment tools.