Development of a Scale to Assess Hospital Ward Nurse Team Collaboration, and Establishment of the Reliability and Validity of the Scale

Abstract

In this study we developed an original scale comprised of 29 items to assess hospital ward nurse team collaboration including collaboration with physicians, based on previous qualitative studies and a literature review conducted by the authors. Using the 29-item original scale, we conducted a questionnaire survey with 1,285 ward nurses working in university hospitals with 400 beds or more in the Kanto region of Japan. We included 617 (48.0%) responses in the analysis. An exploratory factor analysis using a generalized least-squares Promax rotation extracted 17 items for the four factors from the 29-item original scale: “communication in the ward,” “support among team members,” “collaboration with doctors,” and “ethical behavior in the team.” Using these items as required items, we completed a Ward Nurse Team Collaboration (WNTC) scale that assesses hospital ward nurse team collaboration. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated goodness of fit of the completed scale. In the examination of reliability, the Cronbach alpha coefficients were 0.91 for the whole scale of 17 items, and 0.86 --0.91 for the subscales. The intraclass correlation coefficient by the test-retest method was 0.82 and the correlation coefficient with the “team process scale” as an external criterion was 0.65. Based on these statistical criteria we determined that the WNTC scale comprised on 17 items developed in this study has sufficient reliability and validity to assess hospital ward nurse team collaboration.