PRELIMINARY DEVELOPMENT OF NURSES’ PRACTICE OF PEACEFUL END-OF-LIFE CARE INSTRUMENT (NP-PECI)

Abstract

Peaceful dying process is considered as an important outcome of high-quality of palliative care and end-of-life care. To meet the patients’ needs of peaceful end of life, appropriate nurses’ practice of peaceful end-of-life care is demanded. However,  no specific instrument was found to assess nurses’ practice of peaceful end-of-life care. This paper aims to report a preliminary development of an instrument to measure practice of peaceful end-of-life care among nurses. Theory of Peaceful End of Life developed by Ruland and Moore was employed as a framework in initial creating 30 item questionnaires of Nurses’ Practice of Peaceful End of Life Instrument (NP-PECI) in English language. The steps of validating contents of questionnaires were followed. Three experts in this area were reviewed and gave comments on each item. Content Validity Index (CVI) was evaluated and its average value was 0.94. Some unclear language items were revised. A pilot study in 60 Chinese nurses in a community hospital was done during March, 2021. The reliability of the NP-PECI was measured by using internal consistence reliability in which Cronbach’s alpha was 0.973. The result of this pilot study showed that the NP-PECI with 30 items was valid and reliable. However, rigorous evaluation of psychometric properties of this instrument will be recommended in a large sample size.