Development of a questionnaire to measure the moral sensitivity of nursing students.

Moral sensitivity is important for both, qualified nurses and nursing students. Currently, however, the instruments to measure moral sensitivity exist for qualified nurses only. The objective of this study is to develop a valid and reliable instrument to assess moral sensitivity of nursing students and to examine the development and differentiation of this sensitivity by school year, clinical training, and other educational variables. The study comprised semi-structured focus group interviews and a survey using a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire was developed using data obtained from the focus groups and distributed to 1,995 nursing students in three Bachelor of Science in Nursing programs (BScN) and eight Nursing Diploma programs. Completed questionnaires were obtained from 473 nursing students. An exploratory factor analysis indicated that 11 items and 3 factors were extracted: "Moral Strength," "Sense of Moral Burden," and "Moral Responsibility." The factors each demonstrated acceptable content- and criterion-related validity with the Resilience Measurement Scale for University Students. This three-factor structure was consistent with that of the Japanese version of the revised Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire. The mean score of each item ranged from 2.75 to 4.74 (SD = 1.04 - 1.34). A comparison of inter-year scores showed that third-year students had significantly higher Moral Strength scores in both the BScN and Nursing Diploma programs. The 11-item questionnaire developed for this study was consistent with a three-factor structure of registered nurses' moral sensitivity and successfully identified differences in moral sensitivity among nursing students. Using this type of questionnaire will allow nursing programs to improve the moral sensitivity of nursing students by allowing lecturers to develop tailored moral sensitivity programs.

Proxy evaluation of dignity expectations and satisfaction of older patients with dementia by family members and nurses.

AIM: Develop a proxy evaluation questionnaire for patients' family members and nurses to evaluate dignity expectations and satisfaction of patients with dementia. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. METHOD: A proxy questionnaire draft was prepared with 30 items on expectations for dignity and 23 items on satisfaction with dignity. And administered to three paired groups: 81 older patients with intact cognitive function, 75 family members, and 77 nurses. RESULTS: 18 of 30 items and 21 of 23 were correlated between patients and their family members' responses on dignity expectations and satisfaction, respectively. When limited to nurses with clinical experience of ≥20 years, there were significant correlations between patients' and nurses' responses (p < .05). Exploratory factor analysis of patient's responses to significantly correlated items extracted 3 factors with 13 items of expectations for dignity but no factors of satisfaction with dignity. Using a questionnaire provides insight for proxy evaluation of expectations for dignity.

Health Information Sharing Among Muslim Women in a Japanese Mosque.

With the increase of foreign residents in Japan, most of them are suffering from inadequate health information. In reference to an ethnography, we conducted fieldwork using a participant observation and an interview with 36 foreign Muslim women. Our study clarified they especially needed health information on childcare because of a lack of such information in their native languages, and needed the support of Japanese Muslims because of problems in communication with healthcare personnel.

Development of the Inpatient Dignity Scale Through Studies in Japan, Singapore, and the United Kingdom.

PURPOSE: The importance of human dignity in care is well-recognized. Care recipients' experiences with undignified care have been reported in many countries. However, few studies have measured these situations quantitatively, especially as there are no tools applicable to inpatients receiving ordinary daily care. This study aimed to develop a valid and reliable Inpatient Dignity Scale (IPDS) that can measure inpatients' expectations of and satisfaction with dignity in daily care. METHODS: We conducted a three-phase research project: item generation and a preliminary survey with 47 items related to patients' dignity in Japan, a main survey with 36 items with deliberate translation into English in Singapore, and a confirmatory survey with 35 items in England, with 442, 430, and 500 inpatients as participants in questionnaire surveys, respectively. Data from each survey were processed using factor analysis. RESULTS: Authors obtained a scale with a four-factor structure with acceptable reliability: (F1) respect as a human being, (F2) respect for personal feelings and time, (F3) respect for privacy, and (F4) respect for autonomy. CONCLUSION: The Inpatient Dignity Scale can be periodically used by hospital administrators or nurses to preserve inpatients' dignity in daily care by monitoring inpatients' views regarding their expectations of and satisfaction with dignity.

Translational Acceleration, Rotational Speed, and Joint Angle of Patients Related to Correct/Incorrect Methods of Transfer Skills by Nurses.

Currently, due to shortages in the nursing faculty and low access to actual patients, it is difficult for students to receive feedback from teachers and practice with actual patients to obtain clinic experience. Thus, both evaluation systems and simulated patients have become urgent requirements. Accordingly, this study proposes a method to evaluate the nurse's transfer skill through observation from the patient. After verifying the proposed method, it will be integrated with a robotic patient as a future work. To verify if such an evaluation is practical, a checklist comprising 16 steps with correct and incorrect methods was proposed by the nursing teachers. Further, the evaluation parameters were determined as translational acceleration, rotational speed, and joint angle of patient. Inertial sensors and motion capture were employed to measure the translational acceleration, rotational speed, and joint angle. An experiment was conducted with two nursing teachers, who were asked to carry out both correct and incorrect methods. According to the results, three parameters reveal the difference for a patient under correct/incorrect methods and can further be used to evaluate the nurse's skill once the thresholds are determined. In addition, the applicability of inertial sensors is confirmed for the use of robot development.

Relationship between nursing students' preference for types of teaching materials and learning effects of self-learning tool.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between learning effects of the self-learning tool for nursing students and types of teaching materials. Ten nursing students were asked to perform transfer a patient from bed to wheelchair after watching the demo video and practicing 20 minutes. The students' performance was evaluated before and after practicing. The students were also asked to choose teaching materials that would be developed in the future. Out of nine teaching materials, the students chose seven of them. Correspondence analysis was conducted between the results of the evaluation of students' transfer technique and their preference of teaching materials. The results indicated that there was no relationship between the preference of teaching materials and the scores of transfer techniques. The authors concluded that the self-learning was not affected by the preference of teaching materials.

Nurses' perception on information privacy in Japan.

This study explores how nurses perceive patients' privacy and with whom they share the patients' information. A descriptive study was conducted on 710 nurses from three hospitals. The results show 1) nurses think of patients' privacy more importantly than their own privacy, 2) nurses hesitated somewhat to share information on "family structure" and "elimination habit" with other nurses, 3) nurses shared more limited information with the staff on the hospital food service unit than with other health professionals. Compared to the previous study conducted three years ago, this study showed nurses have become more sensitive to patient privacy in Japan.

Locating non-working nurses in Japan: A feasibility study.

In order to examine feasibility and to describe characteristics of nurses who were not working as nurses, a questionnaire survey was conducted using channels of newspaper distribution. 70 cases responded, with an estimated response rate of 12%. Age distribution was unimodal with a peak in the 30s. This shape and the age distribution for working nurses obtained by our previous survey were mutually complementary. The result shows that such a method of data collection can be representative of the characteristics of nurses who are not working as nurses to some extent, and has some feasibility. At present there is no other way. However, in the near future, a license renewal system should be built, which would allow collection of information from whole nursing license holders.