Developing and Validating an Instrument to Assess the Nurses' Professional Competence in Spiritual Care

Background and Purpose: Spiritual care is an important issue in health-related professions and has significant effects on patients' psychological well-being. This study aimed to develop an instrument for assessing Iranian nurses' professional competence in spiritual care. Methods: First, extensive reviewing of articles and books on spirituality and spiritual care was performed to extract the primary items and then validation tests were conducted. Results: A 38-item instrument was developed for assessing nurses' professional competence in providing spiritual care. The content validity index (CVI) and content validity ratio (CVR) values of the final instrument were .90 and .75, respectively. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the total instrument was .934. Conclusions: The instrument developed in this study has good CVI and CVR values and is useful in assessing nurses' competence in providing spiritual care.