Development and Psychometric Testing of the Relational Care Scale

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to report the development and testing of the self-report Relational Care Scale (RCS). The RCS was specifically designed to evaluate the relational care that nursing staff provides to residents living in nursing homes. The scale's content validity was assessed with the assistance of experts and related research in the area of nurse-resident interactions, and then the scale was pilot tested with 30 residents of a long-term care (LTC) facility to determine its clarity and stability. The 6-item scale was then administered to a sample of 50 residents in an intervention study and then to 72 residents in a correlational study in two other LTC facilities in Ontario, Canada. Construct validity was demonstrated with positive correlations between RCS scores and a Relationship VAS measure (r = .63, p < .0001) and between RCS scores and an observational Relational Behavior Scale (r = .42, p < .001), which was also developed to assess relational care. Study results demonstrated that the RCS is a reliable and valid instrument that may be used to measure relational care to test interventions focusing on enhancing the relational care staff provides to residents.

Observational Evidence of For-Profit Delivery and Inferior Nursing Home Care: When Is There Enough Evidence for Policy Change?

“…Nurse staffing levels have a positive impact on both the process and the outcomes of nursing home care, such as reduced resident time in bed, improved feeding assistance, incontinence care, exercise and repositioning [ 33 ], fewer regulatory deficiencies [ 35 ], and lower rates of pressure ulcers [ 17 ]. Higher staffing levels are associated with lower staff turnover [ 36 ]—a pre-condition for good relational care, which in turn is associated with improved quality of life [ 23 ] (i.e., relational care embraces the entire relationship between caregiver and care recipient, encompassing the physical, social, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of human connection [ 37 , 38 ]). In a US study, the largest ten for-profit chains had lower registered nurse and total nurse staffing hours and a 41% higher number of serious deficiencies than government facilities, controlling for other factors [ 30 ].…”

Nursing home resident relationship types: What supports close relationships with peers & staff?

“…Many nursing homes have invested efforts in care delivery strategies that, in part, foster close relationship development such as the use of consistent assignment staffing models and development of small house facilities (Cutler & Kane, 2009;Roberts, Nolet, & Bowers, 2015). Despite the emphasis on relationships in the field, "close relationships" are often undefined in the literature (Boscart, 2010;McGilton, Pringle, O'Brien-Pallas, Wynn, & Streiner, 2005)…”

Patient-centred communication intervention study to evaluate nurse-patient interactions in complex continuing care

“…Patients’ satisfaction with care is measured with the Relational Care Scale (RCS) [49], which has acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.87) and test-retest reliability (r = 0.70). The 6-item scale demonstrated sensitivity to change in two studies of patients with communication impairments [26,45].…”