A Measurement of Protective Nursing Advocacy: The Protective Nursing Advocacy Scale

Nursing advocacy for patients is considered to be an important function of nursing practice. The research surrounding nursing advocacy is relatively new, with few psychometric instruments developed to measure nursing advocacy. The purpose of this study was to determine the psychometric properties of the Protective Nursing Advocacy Scale (PNAS) and provide measures to support validity. The study design was a descriptive correlational design using a randomly selected sample of 419 medical-surgical registered nurses in the State of Texas. The PNAS items were analyzed using an exploratory factor analysis along with other psychometric descriptions of the data. The PNAS analysis resulted in the items loading onto four significant and theoretically connected components, subsequently referred to as subscales. The overall reliability of the PNAS demonstrated an acceptable level of reliability, as did the four subscales. Implications for nursing include using with practicing nurses to improve their advocacy skills, which may help improve patient outcomes.