A Professional Commitment Scale for Clinical Nurses: The Study Protocol

Authors: Fateme Jafaraghaee, Abbas Ebadi, Reza Negarandeh, Neda Mehrdad 

Abstract

Background: As the largest, most costly and most fundamental group targeted by programs for the development of the quality of care, nurses should be the focus of the management of human resources in the field of healthcare. The development and maintenance of professional commitment in nurses prevents nurses' turnover and also guides them toward achieving the professional objectives of nursing. A review of literature on this subject revealed the lack of scales designed for measuring professional commitment in nurses.

 Research objectives The present study was designed to develop a scale for measuring professional commitment in clinical nurses and to then examine its psychometric properties.

Research design: This study will develop a professional commitment scale for clinical nurses within one qualitative and one quantitative step. The first step of the study will entail a review of literature on the subject and interviews with clinical nurses so as to develop the categories and the items. The items extracted in this step will then be distributed among a group of experts. The second step, i.e. the quantitative step, will analyze the items extracted in the qualitative step, determine the features of the topics and examine the factor structure of the scale. The initial scale will be completed by 300 clinical nurses. The correlation between the topics and the construct validity and reliability of the scale will also be examined in this step.

Ethical consideration: The research proposal was approved by the ethical committee of Tehran University of Medical Sciences.

Findings: This study will develop an instrument that can measure professional commitment in clinical nurses.

Discussion and conclusion: Given the lack of instruments dedicated to measuring professional commitment in clinical nurses, the findings of this study may be of help to nursing managers and authorities and the health system in general.

Keywords: Study protocol, clinical nursing, professional commitment