Development and assessment of the psychometric properties of a compassionate care questionnaire for nurses

BACKGROUND: Compassionate care is emphasized within professional ethics codes for nursing and is a key indicator of care quality. The purpose of the present study is to develop and assess the psychometric properties of a compassionate care instrument for nurses. METHODS: This methodological study was carried out in two phases -qualitative and quantitative-from February 2016 to October 2018. In the qualitative stage of the study, a content analysis approach was used to establish the concept of compassionate care through interviews with nurses, patients, and family caregivers. The initial draft of the questionnaire was developed based on the qualitative findings and a subsequent review of the literature. In the second phase, the psychometric properties of the questionnaire were assessed for validity and reliability. Data analysis was performed using descriptive and inferential statistics in SPSS v.16. RESULTS: From the results of the qualitative phase and review of literature, 80 items were extracted. In the quantitative phase, after evaluation of the face and content validity, 40 items were kept. After measurement of the construct validity, 28 items whose factor loading was above 0.4 were retained. Measurement of convergent validity showed a moderate correlation between the questionnaire and the nurses’ caring behaviors scale (r = 0.67, P = 0.01). The reliability of the 28-item questionnaire was tested by measuring its Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and intra-class correlation coefficient which were found to be 0.91 and 0.94 for the whole questionnaire, respectively. CONCLUSION: The questionnaire has enough validity and reliability to be used for measuring the nurses’ compassionate care. Therefore, the instrument can be used to measure and record the quality of nursing care. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12912-021-00691-3.