Development of ethical dilemma scale Japanese nurse faced physical restraints to elderly patients with dementia

Copyright © 2013 Miwa Yamamoto et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Purpose: This study aimed to develop an ethical di-lemma scale for nurses faced with the use of physical restraint when caring for elderly patients with de-mentia. Methods: We used a previously established 20-item dilemma scale. The objective and method of the study were explained to the head of nursing at 17 selected hospitals, and 121 nurses working in the general wards of 14 hospitals (excluding emergency department wards of psychiatry, pediatrics, obstetrics, outpatients, operating rooms and intensive care units) who agreed to participate were enrolled in 2000. Se-venty-six nurses from one of the hospitals were se-lected after eight years (2008) to provide a compari-son. Ethical considerations: The study was conducted with the approval of the ethics committee at Meiji University of Integrative Medicine. Results and dis-cussion: Four factors were compared between 2000 and 2008: “execution of treatment and security”, “cha-racteristic features in nursing of elderly patients with dementia”, “cooperative relationship in nursing”, and “priorities in nursing”. The cumulative contribution ratio was 65.3 % (KMO = 0.77, p = 0.000) in 2000 and 72.5 % (KMO = 0.78, p = 0.000) in 2008. Therefore, the scale dilemma nurse faced physical restraints to elderly patients with dementia in Japan was devel-oped 4 facoters from 17-delremmas items of 20 items