The validity and reliability of an instrument to assess nursing competencies in spiritual care.

Aim: This study contributes to the development of a valid and reliable instrument, the spiritual care competence scale, as an instrument to assess nurses' competencies in providing spiritual care.

Background: Measuring these competencies and their development is important and the construction of a reliable and valid instrument is recommended in the literature.

Design: Survey.

Learning effects of thematic peer-review: a qualitative analysis of reflective journals on spiritual care.

This study describes the learning effects of thematic peer-review discussion groups (Hendriksen, 2000. Begeleid intervisie model, Collegiale advisering en probleemoplossing, Nelissen, Baarn.) on developing nursing students' competence in providing spiritual care.

The effectiveness of an educational programme for nursing students on developing competence in the provision of spiritual care.

Aim: To determine the effects of a course for nursing students on developing competence in spiritual care and the factors that might influence the effects.

Background: Studies suggest that role preparation in nursing for spiritual care is poor. For the assessment of competence, few or no explicit competency framework or assessment tools seemed to be used.

Aspects of spirituality concerning illness.

The spiritual dimension of illness, health and care may be seen as a unique aspect in addition to the physical, mental and social dimension. This contribution describes experiences of patients, nurses and hospital chaplains in relation to the spiritual aspects of being ill. Qualitative research was performed with the design of a focus group study, consisting of 13 focus groups with a total of 67 participants.

Spiritual care: implications for nurses' professional responsibility.

Aim: This paper aimed to gain insight into the spiritual aspects of nursing care within the context of health care in the Netherlands and to provide recommendations for the development of care in this area and the promotion of the professional expertise of nurses.

Background: International nursing literature suggests that caregivers are expected to pay attention to spiritual aspects of patient care. In Dutch nursing literature, the spiritual dimension is increasingly becoming a focus of attention.

Diagnostic accuracy of the care dependency scale.

Aim: This paper reports an investigation of the diagnostic accuracy of the Care Dependency Scale (CDS).

Background: Assessment tools can be described in terms of diagnostic accuracy, or the ability to correctly classify subjects into clinically relevant subgroups. Diagnostic accuracy can be determined by several techniques as sensitivity, specificity, receiver operating curve analysis and likelihood ratios.

Further psychometric testing of the Dutch Care Dependency Scale on two different patient groups.

The Care Dependency Scale (CDS) is an instrument for assessing functional care demands of psychogeriatric nursing home patients. The purpose of this study was to examine whether the CDS can be used on institutionalized elderly people other than psychogeriatric nursing home patients. Therefore, data were gathered on two different populations: residential home patients and somatic (high care) nursing home patients.

Are nurses able to assess fatigue, exertion fatigue and types of fatigue in residential home patients?

Are nurses able to assess fatigue, exertion fatigue and types of fatigue in residential home patients? Although fatigue is recognized as a subjective, generalized, extensive and disabling health care problem with a relatively high prevalence among the chronically ill, there have been no studies to show whether nurses caring for fatigued subjects are able to accurately assess the level of fatigue that exists in these patients. The aim of the present study is to investigate this issue. The following research questions are formulated: (1) To what degree do the assessments of fatigue and exertion fatigue given by nurses and patients agree? and (2) To what degree do the assessments of types of fatigue given by nurses and patients agree? The method adopted employed a correlational design approach applied to residential home patients and nurses.