Development and Psychometric Testing of New Instruments to Assess Nurse Practitioners’ Provision of Spiritual Care

Purpose:The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate the psychometric properties of two instruments measuring the frequency nurse practitioners (NPs) assess spiritual needs and provide spiritual interventions. Spiritual care provided by NPs has potential to improve health indicators without increasing costs. Design: Survey design.Method: Concept analysis of the literature supported each item developed for the new assessment and intervention instruments. Content validity was tested with six subject matter experts using Lawshe’s method of content validity ratios. Interitem correlations further supported construct validity of the items with 133 practicing NPs. Cronbach’s alpha supported internal consistency of the instruments and subscales. Data reduction was done using factor analysis. Findings: Content validity ratio analysis provided data supporting revision of the original instruments. Convergent validity and divergent validity were also supported for each item. Both the assessment and intervention instruments had high Cronbach’s alphas that met the required .70 for the entire scale and subscales. Factor analysis identified different dimensions of the tools. Conclusions:Both instruments and their subscales showed evidence of validity and reliability. Continued research to refine the instruments is needed. Implications: The instruments can be valuable for assessing NP practice regarding spiritual care within relationship-based and patient-centered care