Nursing interventions on sexual health: validation of the NISH Scale in baccalaureate nursing students in Taiwan.

Background: No widely accepted tool is available to assess nursing interventions on patient's sexual health among nursing students. Consequently, nursing school faculty cannot determine the sexual healthcare-related skills of nursing students.

Objective: The aim of this article was to develop and test a scale to assess nursing interventions on sexual health.

Methods: A 19-item instrument Nursing Interventions on Sexual Health (NISH) was developed using 10 semi-structured interviews of senior nursing students, expert review, and comparative analysis of text and field notes. A total of 198 senior nursing students were recruited from two nursing schools in central Taiwan to test the instrument. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to measure construct validity and Cronbach's alpha to measure internal consistency. Methods: Validity and reliability of the NISH scale based on the Permission, Limited Information, Specific Suggestion, and Intensive Therapy (PLISSIT) model.

Results: Three factors (permission, limited information, and specific suggestion) were retained after EFA of the 19 items of NISH. Cronbach's alpha for the subscales increased from 0.71-0.93 to 0.74-0.94 and from 0.93 to 0.95 for the total scale, with 72.42% of the cumulative variance explained by these three factors. Nursing students' age (P=0.019) correlated positively with total score.

Conclusions: NISH is a useful and reliable scale for assessing the frequency of PLISSIT-related behaviors used by nursing students to address patient's sexual health concerns. Nursing faculties can use this scale to assess students' performance and find their omitted behaviors in clinical practice regarding sexual health care.