Development and Evaluation of Nursing Work Environment Scale of Clinical Nurses

Abstract

Purpose: This study aimed to develop a nursing work environment scale for clinical nurses and to verify its validity and reliability. Methods: The initial items comprised individual interviews with eleven clinical nurses. The content validity of the initial items was evaluated twice by nine experts, while 37 preliminary items were reviewed through pilot tests with 20 nurses and cognitive interviews with five nurses. The survey data were collected from 353 clinical nurses working at general hospitals. Results: In the exploratory factor analysis, the number of factors was determined through parallel analysis, scree test, and cumulative variance ratio. Consequently, 23 items and three factors were thus composed, yielding a total cumulative variance ratio of 91.3%. The finalized 20 items of the final three factors were subjected to a confirmatory factor analysis, which led to the validation of the three subscales model. The three sub-factors were composed of nurse manager competency, nurse safety management system, and a nurse support system. Conclusion: This scale is expected to be useful for evaluating the nursing work environment of clinical nurses by verifying its reliability and validity through various methods.