Scale Development of Job Stress for Home Care Nurses

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop a job stress scale for hospital-based home care nurses in Korea. The process was construction of the conceptual framework, development of the preliminary items, verification of the content validity, item analysis and test of the reliability. The preliminary items were based on literature review and in-depth interviews with home care nurses. As a result, eight categories and sixty items were selected. These were reviewed by seven specialists for content validity and finally fifty one items were chosen. Data was collected from 180 home care nurses who were engaged in 87 hospitals from August to September 2003. The result of item analysis one was excepted. The final item count was 50. Categories were as follows: overload work (8 items), lack of specialized knowledge and technique (5 items), ethical dilemma (4 items), role conflict (5 items), interpersonal relationships (6 items), visiting home environment (9 items), driving conditions (4 items) and lack of administrative support (9 items), The reliability of the scale by Cronbach's alpha was .948 and the domain's reliability ranged from .649 to .841. The result of this study could be used to measure the job stress of home care nurses. However, for further validity and reliability, repeated studies will be necessary.

Development of Items for Transitional Care Service and Outcome Indicators of Discharged Patients for Improvement in Quality of Care

“…Since nursing care is provided in a special situation—the home of a patient—and treatments are provided in the absence of fellow medical staff to resolve a patient’s health problem, nurses need to be equipped with various skills to handle these special situations. 30 31 In order to develop the clinical decision-making ability of nurses of home-based/home-visit nursing care services, it is necessary to provide continuing education considering their clinical background and a range of educational programs focusing on real-life cases. The connection to community services/resources with these methods is expected to improve the patient’s quality of life and social support systems and reduce the caregivers’ burden of care.…”