Nursing attitudes towards acute mental health care: development of a measurement tool.
OBJECTIVE
This paper reports the development, piloting and validation of a tool to measure attitudes for use with nursing staff working in acute mental health care units.


BACKGROUND
The quality of care provided for service users in acute mental health care has come under both scrutiny and severe criticism. The attitudes of staff working in these environments have been cited as a contributory factor in poor care. No measure of attitudes specific to acute mental health has been reported.


METHODS
A 64-question measure was constructed and distributed to a sample of qualified and unqualified nurses drawn from seven mental health care units in the North of England. Exploratory factor analysis and a number of other statistical tests were performed to validate the questionnaire.


RESULTS
Preliminary analysis reduced the original 64 questions to 37. Five components were retained, accounting for 42% of the variance, and the five rotated factors were identified. The resultant 'Attitudes Towards Acute Mental Health Scale' (ATAMHS) achieved good internal reliability, with a Cronbach's alpha of 0.72.


CONCLUSIONS
The construction and validation of the ATAMHS measure will enable improved understanding of the attitudes of nursing staff working in acute mental health care settings to occur. This measure is available for use in a clinical area of nursing in which attitude change is of fundamental importance for future development of care.
Baker
John A
JA
School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK. john.a.baker@manchester.ac.uk
Richards
David A
DA
Campbell
Malcolm
M
D000208:Acute Disease; D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000451:nursing / Q000628:therapy*; D009740:Nursing Staff / Q000523:psychology*; D025341:Principal Component Analysis / Q000379:methods; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018401:Sample Size; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires