Thesis advisor: Pamela J. Grace / As supported by extensive literature, nurses have a role to play in helping patients and families in getting their needs understood and met. This ethical responsibility includes decisions made by nurses in the context of end-of-life (EOL) care. Ethical decision-making is known to be influenced by nurses' understanding of their professional accountability and several cognitive processes that underlie moral action. Rest (1986) theorized these processes as: moral sensitivity, judgment, moral motivation, and moral character. However, few instruments have been developed to understand nurses' ethical decision-making during EOL care, and most have focused on a single dimension rather than on the multi-dimensional process. The purposes of this methodological study were: 1) to develop a scale with content domains and items capable of describing Korean nurses' ethical decision-making at EOL and 2) to evaluate the scale's psychometric properties using Korean nurses (N = 230). The criteria for participation were: Korean nurses having more than 2 years of clinical experience in the types of units where most Korean patients spend the end of their lives: critical care, general medical-surgical, and hospice units. The process followed two steps. Phase I consisted of the development of domains and items. Three domains were identified through themes derived from an integrated review of relevant literature and the findings from a preliminary qualitative study involving experts in EOL care in Korea. 95 items were generated within these three domains. Content validation was completed by a panel of six nursing ethics experts, three in Korea and three in the U.S. Next, a pilot study to test readability was conducted using three Korean nurses. During Phase II, 67 items of the NEDM-EOLCS version 3.0 were tested. After item analysis and factor analysis, a 55-item final version of the NEDM-EOLCS was established. The total scale and three subscales reported good reliability and validity. The three subscales were labeled: "perceived professional accountability," "moral reasoning and moral agency," and "moral practice at the EOL." / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Connell School of Nursing. / Discipline: Nursing.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BOSTON/oai:dlib.bc.edu:bc-ir_101479 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Kim, Sanghee |
| Publisher | Boston College |
| Source Sets | Boston College |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, thesis |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. |
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