Nurses attitudes towards falling prevention: A scale development study

Purpose: The aim of this methodological and descriptive study was to develop a "Nurses' Attitudes Towards Prevention of Falls Scale" and to identify the factors that influence nurses' attitudes towards falls prevention. Materials ve Methods: The study was conducted between 27/11/2020 and 28/02/2023 at Tokat State Hospital and Tokat Gaziosmanpaşa University Hospital. The study used a nested mixed design in which qualitative and quantitative research methods were used together. In the first phase, where a qualitative research design was used, phenomenological interviews were conducted with 24 nurses. A scale item pool was created by analysing the interviews with the nurses and the literature on the topic. In the second phase, using a quantitative research design, validity and reliability analyses of the Nurses' Attitudes Towards Prevention of Falls Scale Draft were applied to 630 nurses according to the scale development steps. The SPSS 28 and IBM SPSS Amos 21.0 programmes were used to analyse the quantitative data, and the MAXQDA 22 programme was used to analyse the qualitative data. Findings: Nurses' Attitudes Towards Prevention of Falls Scale Draft, according to the expert opinion, the content validity index of the draft scale was set at 0.94. After confirmatory factor analysis, the "Nurses' Attitudes Towards Prevention of Falls Scale", comprised of 19 items and 5 sub-dimensions (protector precaution, risk assessment, incident reporting, falls prevention and care planning). In the confirmatory factor analysis, the following values were obtained for the goodness of fit of the scale: χ²/sd: 2.360; GFI: 0.948; AGFI: 0.931; IFI: 0.966; TLI: 0.958; CFI: 0.965; RMSEA: 0.046; SRMR: 0.043. The reliability of the scale over time was assessed using the test-retest method and it was found that the inter-response agreement was very good (ICC: 0.822; p<0.001). It was found that the Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient of the scale was 0.843 and the Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient of the sub-dimensions of the scale ranged from 0.700 to 0.912. As a result of the qualitative data analysis, 6 themes and 27 subthemes were identified. In this study, the most common groups of falls, the factors influencing falls, the impact of falls on the individual, measures to prevent falls, interventions after falls and the emotions of caregivers after falls were identified as themes. Conclusion: This present study determined that the Nurses' Attitudes Towards Prevention of Falls Scale was a valid and reliable scale.