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. 2023 Oct;62(5):3529-3545.
doi: 10.1007/s10943-023-01805-8. Epub 2023 Apr 2.

Development and Validation of the Nurses' Spiritual Sensitivity Scale in Southeastern Iran

Omolbanin Akbari  1 , Mahlagha Dehghan  2 , Batool Tirgari  3
Affiliations

Development and Validation of the Nurses' Spiritual Sensitivity Scale in Southeastern Iran

Omolbanin Akbari et al. J Relig Health. 2023 Oct.

Abstract

Spiritual sensitivity refers to awareness and perception of the attitudes and feelings of others and helps nurses to recognize and take responsibility for the spiritual values and needs of patients. The dimensions of spiritual sensitivity remain unknown as there is no comprehensive and standardized scale for assessing nurses' spiritual sensitivity; therefore, the current research aimed to design and validate the nurses' spiritual sensitivity scale. We conducted this exploratory sequential study using eight stages suggested by DeVellis (2016) when developing the scale. We conducted this study among Iranian nurses from March 2021 to October 2022. Results suggested a 20-item scale with two components (nurses' professional spiritual sensitivity and nurses' internal spiritual sensitivity) that explained 57.62% of the total variance extracted. We were able to confirm convergent validity based on an acceptable correlation between the nurses' spiritual sensitivity scale and the King's spiritual intelligence scale (r = 0.66), which showed good stability (cronbach's alpha coefficient = 0.927, omega coefficient = 0.923, and icc = 0.937). Spiritual sensitivity in nurses is difficult to evaluate. Considering the acceptability of the psychometric properties of the "Nurses' spiritual sensitivity" scale, this scale can be used in clinical environments to evaluate nurses' spiritual sensitivity. Therefore, it is suggested that managers and policy makers should consider developing related guidelines to help nurses to become more spiritually sensitive and also to meet the spiritual needs of patients. We suggest further studies to confirm the study results in the nursing community.

Keywords: Construct validity; Content analysis; Content validity; Factor analysis; Nurse; Scale design and validation; Spiritual sensitivity.

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