Pilot Study of an Instrument to Measure Attitudes to Palliative Care Practice in Neonatal Intensive Care Nursing

This paper reports the processes involved in the pilot testing of an instrument – The Neonatal Palliative Care Attitude Scale (NiPCAS). This instrument was developed to explore a context of nursing practice about which little is known – attitudes to palliative care practice in neonatal intensive care nursing.A two phased approach was undertaken to determine face and content validity and reliability of this instrument. Face and content validity was achieved by assembling an international panel of experts to ensure that wording of the items, and the development of the scale, were both appropriate and comprehensible to the sampling frame for this research. Reliability testing was achieved by employing test-retest procedures to determine temporal stability using intraclass correlation with a sample of neonatal intensive care nurses. Internal consistency was determined using Cronbach's alpha. This instrument has been pilot-tested by administration to a convenience sample of neonatal intensive care nurses at a site in South-east Queensland.The results of the pilot study provided the basis for refinement of the instrument. Based upon the outcome of validity and reliability testing for stability reliability of the instrument, items for the final tool were identified, and the instrument has been administered to a national population sample of neonatal intensive care nurses.