Psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the spiritual care-giving scale (C-SCGS) in nursing practice

Abstract

BackgroundSpiritual care is defined as recognizing and responding to the needs of the human spirit when the individual is facing trauma, illness, or sadness. Providing spiritual care is one of the core aspects of holistic care, as it is significantly associated with patients’ quality of life. The provision of optimal spiritual care requires good understanding by the nurses. Therefore, it is important to assess this understanding by using a proven, well-validated instrument. The Spiritual Care-Giving Scale (SCGS) is designed to measure nurses’ perceptions of spirituality and spiritual care in Singapore. However, it is unknown whether this scale is valid and reliable for use with nurses in the context of Chinese culture. The purpose of this study is to determine this version’s validity and reliability for use with nurses in China.MethodsIn this quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional study, after translating the English version of the SCGS into Chinese and making adjustments for culture and values, we assessed the performance of this instrument by administering the C-SCGS to a convenience sample of 400 nurses. The participants also completed the Chinese version of the Spiritual Care Competency Scale (C-SCCS) to assess the concurrent validity of the C-SCGS. The internal consistency and homogeneity of the C-SCGS were also tested, and a factorial analysis was performed.ResultsCompleted questionnaires were obtained from 355 participants (response rate: 88.75%). Four factors were confirmed by an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) using Promax with the Kaiser normalization rotation method after the 35-item SCGS was reduced to 34 items, and these factors explained 53.116% of the total variance. The adjusted item–total correlation ranged from 0.527 to 0.760. The Cronbach’s alpha of the factors ranged from 0.836 to 0.941, and the Guttman split-half coefficient was between 0.759 and 0.902. The concurrent validity of the C-SCGS and C-SCCS (r = 0.534, p < 0.01) showed a significant correlation. Nurses’ education showed a significant association with the scores of the C-SCGS.ConclusionThe C-SCGS was found to be a psychometrically sound measurement to evaluate Chinese-speaking nurses’ perceptions of spirituality and spiritual care.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12874-019-0662-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Development and preliminary validation of a brief nurses’ perceived professional benefit questionnaire (NPPBQ)

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Psychometric properties of the Chinese mainland version of the Palliative Care Spiritual Care Competency Scale (PCSCCS-M) in nursing: a cross-sectional study

“…The original 35-item SCGS was developed by Tiew and Creedy [26] to measure nursing students' and nurses' perceptions of spirituality and spiritual care. We translated and evaluated the 34-item C-SCGS [27] with Tiew's permission. The C-SCGS has four core factors: attributes of spiritual care (Cronbach's alpha 0.941), definitions of spirituality and spiritual care (Cronbach's alpha 0.852), spiritual perspectives (Cronbach's alpha 0.836), and spirituality and spiritual care values (Cronbach's alpha 0.866).…”

Effectiveness of spiritual care training to enhance spiritual health and spiritual care competency among oncology nurses

“…Motivated by the growing importance placed on the provision of spiritual care to patients, research on spiritual care has recently increased [34]. However, although previous research has shown that both patients and their family members have great spiritual needs and that medical personnel must show concern for and satisfy these needs, this issue has not received sufficient attention in nursing practice [37,62].…”

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“…Currently, research on nurses' spiritual health and spiritual care competencies remains at a preliminary stage [34,45], and little relevant interventional research has been conducted. As a consequence, scientifically based and effective intervention protocols must be drafted to boost nurses' levels of spiritual care.…”