Development and Validity and Reliability of an Instrument to Assess Patient’s Spiritual Well-Being

Abstract

Chun-Kai Fang,1– 4 Sung-Yuan Cheng,5 Shih-Hsuan Pi,6,7 Ya-Li Wu,5 Keng-Chen Lin,5,8 Ruei-Yi Pan5 1Hospice and Palliative Care Center, MacKay Memorial Hospital, New Taipei, Taiwan; 2Department of Thanatology and Health Counseling, National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences, Taipei, Taiwan; 3Department of Death Care Service, MacKay Junior College of Medicine, Nursing, and Management, Taipei, Taiwan; 4Institute of Long-Term Care, MacKay Medical College, New Taipei, Taiwan; 5Department of Pastoral Care, MacKay Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan; 6Department of Medical Research, MacKay Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan; 7Department of Crime Prevention and Corrections, Central Police University, Taoyuan, Taiwan; 8Institute of Health Policy and Management, College of Public Health, National Taiwan University, Taipei, TaiwanCorrespondence: Chun-Kai Fang, Hospice and Palliative Care Center, MacKay Memorial Hospital, New Taipei, Taiwan, Email [email protected]: Spiritual care is not limited to palliative care or end-of-life care. The spiritual well-being of patients also needs to be taken into account in the multidisciplinary healthcare system of whole person care. For medical institutions providing spiritual care, it is necessary to develop a tool for clinical spiritual care providers to assess patient’s spiritual well-being of.Aim: The purpose of this study was to construct a questionnaire that would allow spiritual care providers or pastors to assess the spiritual well-being of patients.Methods: The study combined qualitative and quantitative research methods. Qualitative research used in-depth interviews or focus groups with patients and family members to obtain textual data. The text was analyzed by Colaizzi analysis. The researchers constructed the Patient’s Spiritual Well-Being Scale (PtSpWBS) from the themes obtained through qualitative analysis. Through the participation of 661 patients, quantitative research was conducted to analyze the reliability, validity and component analysis of the PtSpWBS.Results: Through qualitative research, it was found the spiritual needs of patients had two domains, namely spiritual awareness and spiritual dynamics. Based on this result, a 15-question PtSpWBS was designed. Cronbach’s alpha was used to check the reliability of the PtSpWBS, and the internal consistency was calculated with a Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.899. The Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity of the PtSpWBS reached a significant difference (p< 0.0001), and the KMO value of sampling appropriateness was 0.900. The three components were spiritual health, religion connection, and spiritual awareness. A PtSpWBS score ≦ 41 indicated the patient had poor spiritual well-being.Conclusion: The study constructed the PtSpWBS for clinical spiritual care providers to evaluate spiritual well-being of patients; this questionnaire has good reliability and validity. The PtSpWBS can be truly used by departments that specialize in providing spiritual care in medical institutions to conduct spiritual well-being assessment.Keywords: spiritual well-being, spiritual care, patient, clinical spiritual care provider, pastor

Keywords

• spiritual well-being
• spiritual care
• patient
• clinical spiritual care provider
• pastor