Development and Evaluation of an Integrative Palliative Care Scale for Cancer Patients / 한국간호교육학회지

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: This study was done to develop and to evaluate an integrative palliative care scale for cancer patients. METHODS: The process included construction of a conceptual framework, generation of initial items, verification of content validity, selection of secondary items, preliminary study, and extraction of final items. The participants were 173 cancer patients in Daegu and Gyeongbuk. Item analysis, factor analysis, criterion related validity, and internal consistency were used to analyze the data. RESULTS: Eighteen items were selected for the final scale, and categorized into 3 factors explaining 58.3% of total variance. The factors were labeled as social/environmental palliative care (9 items), psychological palliative care (4 items), and physical palliative care (3 items), and spiritually palliative care (2 items). The scores for the scale were significantly correlated with the quality of life of cancer patients. Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the 18 items was .88. CONCLUSION: The above findings indicate that the integrative palliative care scale has good validity and reliability when used for cancer patients.