Nurse Spiritual Therapeutics Scale: Psychometric evaluation among cancer patients

To translate and validate the Nurse Spiritual Therapeutics Scale (NSTS) among cancer patients in Beijing, China.

Spirituality is an essential and integrating facet of persons. However, spirituality is a new concept for most people in mainland China.

The NSTS was translated, adapted and content-validated. The psychometric evaluation was performed with data collected from cancer patients hospitalised in one of the two academic medical centres. After computing the scale content validity index (S-CVI), exploratory factor analysis was conducted to understand the content validity of the scale. Internal consistency was evaluated using Cronbach's alpha. GRRAS checklist was used to enhance the quality and transparency of this research.

Participants (N = 153) completed the 18-item C-NSTS. The S-CVI of the C-NSTS was 0.92. Cronbach's alpha of C-NSTS was 0.88. The C-NSTS was observed to include three factors (providing of religious support, listening to one's life perception and finding of one's value) and three additional items that did not adequately load onto a factor, yet were retained given their face value. Together, these factors explained 65.2% of the variance.

This initial psychometric evaluation of the 18-item C-NSTS demonstrated it to be a valid and reliable instrument to assess cancer patients' wishes regarding nurse-provided spiritual care in the Chinese culture.

These findings could be used for spiritual care, hospice and palliative care, undergraduate or graduate studies.