Nurses' attitudes towards primary health care: development of an instrument

In many countries nurses are the largest group of professionals providing health care. If health care is to be provided following a primary health care philosophy, nurses must be among the leaders in making the change in the way health care is delivered. To be effective nurses must develop positive attitudes towards primary health care and incorporate its principles into practice. The purpose of this paper is to present the development and testing of an instrument to measure nurses' attitudes towards primary health care. The instrument has 35 items divided into five domains based on the principles of primary health care. Two scales, one for attitude and one for importance of concept of professional role, are scored on six-point Likert scales. Initial psychometric evaluation resulted in alpha coefficients of 0.07 to 0.58 for the domains; 0.70 for the attitude scale and 0.93 for the importance scale. Details are provided on the measures taken to establish validity of the instrument. Plans for future testing are included.