Cultural Adaptation and Validation of the Spiritual Coping Strategies Scale (SCSS) for Greece.

INTRODUCTION: Spirituality constitutes a central element of all health and social care professions. The Spiritual Coping Strategies Scale (SCSS) measures both spiritual and religious coping strategiesAim: The aim of this study was to provide evidence for the reliability and validity of SCSS for Greece. METHODS: A total of 301 nurses were selected by convenience sampling and required to complete the SCSS and the FACIT-Spiritual Well-Being Scale-12 non-illness scale. Forward-translations and back-translations were conducted by two bilingual translators (English-Greek) grown up in English-speaking countries (USA, Australia) while cross-cultural adaptation followed strictly the recent WHO guidelines. The reliability and validity of the scale were evaluated by correlation analysis, t-test, and exploratory factor analysis. RESULTS: Convergent validity was investigated in comparison to FACIT-Sp-12. Meaning, peace, faith, and total spirituality were positively correlated to SCSS as expected (r = 0.22 for Meaning, r = 0.34 for Peace, r = 0.70 for Faith, and r = 0.66 for Total Spirituality), implying sufficient convergent validity. The Cronbach's α coefficients of the two subscales were 0.91 and 0.78, respectively. Additionally, the Pearson correlation r for both spiritual and religious strategies showed strong correlations between the two measurements (p < 0.001), first administration and three weeks after. CONCLUSION: SCSS has good reliability and validity among nurses in Greece.

Obstacles to compassion-giving among nursing and midwifery managers: an international study.

AIM: To explore nursing and midwifery managers' views regarding obstacles to compassion-giving across country cultures. BACKGROUND: The benefit of compassionate leadership is being advocated, but despite the fact that health care is invariably conducted within culturally diverse workplaces, the interconnection of culture, compassion and leadership is rarely addressed. Furthermore, evidence on how cultural factors hinder the expression of compassion among nursing and midwifery managers is lacking. METHODS: Cross-sectional, exploratory, international online survey involving 1 217 participants from 17 countries. Managers' responses on open-ended questions related to barriers for providing compassion were entered and thematically analysed through NVivo. RESULTS: Three key themes related to compassion-giving obstacles emerged across countries: 1. related to the managers' personal characteristics and experiences; 2. system-related; and 3. staff-related. CONCLUSIONS: Obstacles to compassion-giving among managers vary across countries. An understanding of the variations across countries and cultures of what impedes compassion to flourish in health care is important. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING PRACTICE AND POLICY: Nursing mangers should wisely use their power by adopting leadership styles that promote culturally competent and compassionate workplaces with respect for human rights. Policymakers should identify training and mentoring needs to enable the development of managers' practical wisdom. Appropriate national and international policies should facilitate the establishment of standards and guidelines for compassionate leadership, in the face of distorted organizational cultures and system-related obstacles to compassion-giving.