Trial Lecture – time and place
See Trial Lecture.
Adjudication committee
- First opponent: Professor Helle Wijk, University of Gothenburg
- Second opponent: Professor Mirjam Ekstedt, Linnaeus University
- Third member and chair of the evaluation committee: Professor II Anners Lerdal, University of Oslo
Chair of the Defence
Associate Professor Hilde Wøien, University of Oslo
Principal Supervisor
Ingeborg Strømseng Sjetne, Norwegian Institute of Public Health
Summary
In nursing homes, nursing care workers are often faced with the challenge of what care to provide and what to leave unfinished. The decision-making process is influenced by the patient, the nurse and characteristics of the care environment. There is a lack of scientifically evaluated instruments to measure relevant and context specific characteristics of nursing practice in Norwegian nursing homes. The overall aim of this thesis is to identify, modify and evaluate instruments to measure nursing practice conceptualised as unfinished care and the care environment in Norwegian nursing homes.
The method involved various activities, including a scoping review to identify existing relevant instruments, qualitative interviews (n=16), input from a reference group, selection and translation of the instruments and development of complementing nursing home items. The instruments were pre-tested using one-to-one interviews (n=14) with subsequent modifications. Finally, the instruments were sent out using an online survey. The final sample consisted of 931 nursing care workers in 66 nursing homes in different parts of the country. A retest was answered by volunteer respondents (n=97). The psychometric evaluation of the instruments included assessment of response processes, acceptability and internal consistency and retest stability. The internal structure was examined using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. To further assess validity, hypotheses about associations with other variables were tested.
The analyses showed good psychometric properties for both instruments. This suggests that the information collected by means of the two instruments will provide valid and reliable results which can be used to measure nursing practice conceptualised as unfinished care and the care environment in Norwegian nursing homes. The information can be used to identify areas in need of improvement, evaluate quality improvement interventions, and in research.
Additional information
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