Development of the Spirituality in Palliative Care Scale for nursing students in the context of Thai culture.

Background: Nursing students form part of the healthcare team who care for patients who are living with a terminal illness and facing physical and spiritual suffering. However, there is a lack of suitable indicators to measure a nurse's spirituality when they are providing palliative care.

Aim: To develop a way of measuring the spirituality of nurses who provide palliative care.

Method: The participants consisted of 312 third-and fourth-year nursing students of two nursing colleges from southern and central Thailand.

Finding: The 12-item Spirituality in Palliative Care Scale had the reliability of .804. The measurement model was consistent with the empirical data and had unidimensional quality (X2=50.94, df=45, p-value=0.25, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA)=0.044, Single Resolution Mechanism Regulation (SRMR)=0.044, Adjusted Goodness of Fit Index (AGFI)=0.95, Corporate Finance Institute (CFI)=0.97, goodness of fit (GFI)=0.97). The items' factor loadings were in between .48 and .84.

Conclusion: The spirituality in palliative care scale can measure nursing students' spirituality in palliative care and nursing educators can use the measurement to support nursing students to develop greater awareness of spirituality in palliative care.