[Development of the Patient Caring Communication Scale]

Area of Science:

• Nursing Science
• Healthcare Quality Measurement
• Psychometrics

Background:

• Patient perception of nursing care is crucial for evaluating healthcare quality.
• Existing measures may not fully capture the nuances of patient-nurse interactions.
• Watson's caring theory provides a framework for understanding essential nursing behaviors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a scale measuring patients' recognition of nurses' care.
• To base the scale on Watson's 10 Carative Factors theory.
• To ensure the scale's reliability and validity for research applications.

Main Methods:

• Item generation through literature review and expert content validity assessment.
• Administration of questionnaires to 285 inpatients across medical and surgical units.
• Statistical analyses including exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis for construct validity, and Cronbach's alpha for reliability.

Main Results:

• A 14-item scale with three factors (respect, genuineness, relationality) was finalized after item analysis and factor analyses.
• Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed model fit, convergent, and discriminant validity.
• The scale demonstrated high reliability (Cronbach's alpha = .92) and criterion validity through correlation with patient-perceived nursing quality.

Conclusions:

• The developed scale possesses strong content, construct, and criterion validity, along with reliability.
• The scale is suitable for measuring patient recognition of nursing care in diverse research settings.
• It can be utilized in future studies, including those employing structural equation modeling for nurse communication analysis.