The first issue of The Journal of Nursing Research in 2015 brims with 10 insightful articles. Six of these conduct scale development and psychometric testing to measure a variety of important issues, including the performance of nurses in long-term care facilities, the Turkish version of the Adolescent Lifestyle Profile (ALP), nurse perceptions of medication administration errors, the efficacy of geriatric health promotion, energy retention behavior in children, and the stresses of pregnancy. The remaining four articles also explore essential issues, including the nursing service framework, the model for implementing evidence-based nursing (EBN) in hospitals, and critical issues in the workplace.
AlBashtawy et al. found that 72% of 355 staff from 8 emergency departments in Jordan reported being exposed to violent acts. The contributing factors included overcrowding, lack of resources, staff shortages, and the lack of antiviolence polices. This finding highlights that policies and legislation related to workplace violence should be instituted and developed and that staff in the emergency department should be trained to improve their competence in preventing and managing violence.
Because malnutrition is prevalent among hospitalized elders, a cross-sectional study conducted by Peng et al. found that cognitive status, concomitant comorbidities, and care status are significant predictors of malnutrition. This result will help clinicians better identify at-risk populations for malnutrition and develop nutrition programs that reflect individual patient needs.
Patients who undergo weaning from mechanical ventilation may face a higher risk of postintervention problems due to poor sleep quality. Chen, Hsu, et al. identified that disease severity and sleep quality are the significant predictors of successful ventilation weaning. This result will help nurses and medical personnel provide better care to patients undergoing the weaning process in respiratory care centers.
Although EBN has been promoted in Taiwan for a decade, an effective model that focuses on the organizational infrastructure to promote EBN has yet to be found. Wang, Kao, and Lin identify five contextual elements and strategic processes including: equipment, policy, training course, outcome indicators, and reward plans to establish the EPCOR model. This model may assist hospitals to initiate and implement EBN practices and then to evaluate the effectiveness of these practices.
Appropriate measurement instruments are important in clinical nursing care and research. Six articles in this issue address scale development and psychometric testing. Two of these assess clinical nursing care performance. Li and colleagues developed a performance assessment instrument for nurses working in long-term care facilities with acceptable reliability and validity. Kao et al. focused on medication administration errors among nurses and conducted psychometric testing of the Inventory of Perceptions for Medication Administration Errors (IPMAE) to help reduce the negative consequences of medication administration error events among nurses.
Chen revised the 30-item Pregnancy Stress Rating Scale (PSRS) by assessing its internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Construct validity and convergent and discriminate validity were also examined. Thus, the new PSRS36 was demonstrated to be a psychometrically sound and practical tool for assessing prenatal stress and for examining intervention protocols for prenatal women.
Ardic and Esin from Turkey translated the ALP scale into Turkish and then assessed its psychometric properties. Results confirmed that the Turkish ALP scale has acceptable psychometric properties and that the scale may be used with Turkish adolescents as an effective measure of their health-promoting lifestyle behaviors.
Child obesity is increasingly prevalent due to the increased consumption of energy-dense foods (E-intake behavior) coupled with increased sedentary behavior (S-behavior). Chen, Cheng, et al. developed and psychometrically tested the Energy Retention Behavior Scale for Children, which is designed to help health professionals comprehensively assess the energy-retention behavior of children.
Wang et al. developed and tested the psychometric Geriatric Health Promotion Scale as a tool to evaluate the prevalent lifestyle patterns of senior citizens in Taiwan. Results showed that the tool was a valid self-report instrument for community-dwelling elders and was easy to use for healthcare providers to evaluate the effectiveness of health promotion programs.
We sincerely hope that our readers enjoy the articles in this issue and find them useful in both academic and clinical work.