Modernizing Measure of the Nurse Work Environment

Research has established a relationship between favorable nurse work environments and better nurse, patient, and organizational outcomes. However, the instrument most frequently used to measure the nurse work environment, the Practice Environment Scale of the Nursing Work Index (PES-NWI), has not had its items significantly re-evaluated since the 1980s.

We sought to examine the psychometric properties of an updated PES-NWI and create an instrument suitable for further testing and refinement to measure the present-day nurse work environment. Specifically, we sought to establish construct, structural, discriminative, and concurrent validity. For reliability, we desired to establish interrater reliability and internal consistency reliability.

We administered a modified PES-NWI to a national sample of direct-care hospital nurses (n = 818) in the United States. We then assessed the psychometric properties of the instrument.

While the modified PES-NWI displayed adequate validity and reliability properties, further testing and refinement of the instrument is necessary.

With this updated measure of the nurse work environment, researchers and hospital leaders can identify modifiable opportunities for improvement in contemporary hospital nurse work environments which may enhance nurse and patient outcomes.