[Ethical attitudes Scale in residences for the elderly. Development of a tool for social and healthcare...

In Spain, there is very little institutional training in bioethics for healthcare professionals, and even less tools for measuring ethical attitudes. The objective of this study was the design and validation of a brief measure of ethical attitudes, collecting general attitudes of healthcare professionals in their daily practice with the dependent elderly.

After drawing up a list of 42 items around the principles of bioethical autonomy, beneficence, confidentiality, justice, and non-maleficence, a committee of experts selected 31 items. A total of 191 health care professionals with a mean age of 43.8 years (SD=11.3), including 150 (78.5%) women and 41 (21.5%) men, and with experience in the field of dependence. responded to the online questionnaire. Model fit was studied using confirmatory factor analysis. Cronbach's alpha was used for the analysis of internal consistency.

A model of 2independent scales with adjusted goodness-of-fit index was observed. Autonomy scale (4 items related to this principle) explained 83% of the variance (P=.005), with χ²/gl=1.782; RMSEA=0.064; GFI=0.991; CFI=0.958. The beneficence, confidentiality and non-maleficence scale (9 items including these 3principles), explained 82% (P<.001) with goodness-of-fit index: χ²/gl=2.194; RMSEA=0.079; GFI=0.931; CFI=0.627. The Cronbach Alphas were 0.525 and 0.748, respectively.

An ethical attitudes scale (EAS) is presented for professionals in the field of caring for dependent adults, including 13 items related to the observance, in daily practice, of the 4 principles of bioethics, autonomy, beneficence, confidentiality and non-maleficence.