Development of a home-visit nursing scale for helping spousal caregivers of terminal cancer patients develop positive perspectives of their caregiving experiences: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

ObjectiveHome-visit nurses play a key role in supporting the spouses of terminal cancer patients and encouraging positive perspectives of the caregiving experience. This study aimed to develop a scale to support nurses in self-assessing their practice around this important role.DesignCross-sectional questionnaire study.SettingThe Home Nursing Scale to Help Spousal Caregivers (HNS-HSC) questionnaire for self-assessment of home-visit nursing to spouses was developed based on interviews with spouses and literature reviews.ParticipantsOverall, 1500 home-visit nurses nationwide who had experience in supporting spousal caregivers and their patients in the predeath and postdeath periods were approached for participation.Main outcome measurePlanned exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to assess the underlying dimensions of the HNS-HSC; Cronbach’s α was used to determine the reliability. The Japanese version of Frommelt Attitude Toward Care of the Dying Scale Form B (FAT-COD-B-J) and Grief Care scale were administered to assess convergent and discriminant validity.ResultsExploratory and confirmatory factor analyses identified 26 items on five factors: ‘helping spouses plan their futures’ ‘helping caregivers alleviate any regrets regarding their care’, ‘understanding the bond between a couple’, ‘providing support for anticipatory grief’, and ‘addressing spousal caregivers’ emotions after their spouses’ deaths’. The final model showed acceptable goodness-of-fit indices. The Cronbach’s α for the entire scale was 0.949 and exceeded 0.822 for each factor. The correlation coefficient with the FAT-COD-B-J, which served as an external validation, was 0.35. The correlation coefficients for the three grief care scales were 0.64, 0.45 and 0.72, respectively.ConclusionsThis scale is a reliable and valid tool for visiting nurses to self-assess their knowledge, skills and practice around helping spousal caregivers. By using this scale, it is expected to change nursing practice in pursuit of improving quality of life of spouses.

Training Proposal in Palliative Care for Primary Care Nurses in a Health Area in Spain

“…The support of the bereaved evaluated in another document indicates the need for assessment tools and referral pathways [ 54 ].…”

A hybrid systematic narrative review of instruments measuring home‐based care nurses' competency

“…The studies were published between 2000 and 2021, and most had been published after 2012 ( n = 17), which may suggest an emerging interest in HBC nurses' competency in the last decade. The studies were conducted in the United States of America ( n = 5) (Bladen & McAtee, 2016; Delaney et al., 2011; Dowding et al., 2018; Hodge, 2020; Reckinger et al., 2013), Japan ( n = 5) (Asahara et al., 2013; Furuno et al., 2020; Karikawa & Nakatani, 2019; Miyata et al., 2022; Ogawa & Nakatani, 2020), Norway ( n = 4), (Bing‐Jonsson et al., 2015, 2016; Finnbakk et al., 2015; Hovland et al., 2018), United Kingdom ( n = 3) (Haddad et al., 2007; Lauder et al., 2000; Shipman et al., 2008), Taiwan ( n = 2) (Guo et al., 2008; Lin et al., 2010), Canada ( n = 1) (Akhtar‐Danesh et al., 2010), Fiji ( n = 1) (Tanabe et al., 2020), Netherlands ( n = 1) (Veldhuizen et al., 2021) and Sweden ( n = 1) (Hasson & Arnetz, 2008). In total, 15,531 participants were involved in the included studies.…”

“…The aim of the instruments provided insights into the types of competencies that are typically expected of HBC nurses and can be categorized into two themes. The first theme focused on the area of nursing work such as early recognition of patient's problems (Bladen & McAtee, 2016), management of patients with heart failure (Delaney et al., 2021), general numeracy skills (Dowding et al., 2018), graph reading skill (Dowding et al., 2018), caring for individuals with behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (Furuno et al., 2020), helping spousal caregivers (Karikawa & Nakatani, 2019), care for individuals with mental health problems (Lauder et al., 2000), competencies for general nursing or public health nursing (Bing‐Jonsson et al., 2015, 2016; Akhtar‐Danesh et al., 2010; Guo et al., 2008; Hodge, 2020; Hovland et al., 2018; Lin et al., 2010; Reckinger et al., 2013; Veldhuizen et al., 2021) and competencies of palliative care (Shipman et al., 2008).…”