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Aims and Objectives: To understand hospice palliative care nurses' (HPCNs) perceptions towards spiritual care and their competence to provide spiritual care., Background: Previous research has shown that many nurses lack a clear understanding of the concept of spirituality and feel inadequately prepared to assess patients' spiritual needs. Studies on competence in spiritual care are mostly descriptive, and the evidence for improving it is limited., Design: A mixed-methods research design was used., Methods: Quantitative data were collected from 282 nurses in forty hospice palliative care (HPC) institutions in South Korea and analysed using descriptive statistics, independent t-test, one-way ANOVA with Bonferroni test and multiple regression. Qualitative data collection involved two stages: first, an open-ended question posed to 282 nurses, and second, focus group interviews conducted with six HPC experts. Both qualitative data sets were analysed separately using content analysis. This study followed the GRAMMS guidelines., Results: Of the six dimensions of spiritual care competence (SCC), the mean scores were highest in 'attitude towards the patient's spirituality' and 'communication', whereas the 'assessment and implementation of spiritual care' and 'professionalisation and improving the quality of spiritual care' had the lowest mean scores. Through content analysis, 4 themes regarding the meaning of spiritual care, 3 themes regarding requirements for spiritual care and 2 themes regarding preparedness for spiritual care were revealed. They perceived the needs of the understanding of spiritual care based on the attributes of spirituality, the education in systematic assessments and implementation for spiritual care with standardised terminology, and the opportunity to reflect on nurses' own spirituality., Conclusions: Practical SCC training for HPCNs and the subsequent development of clinical practice guidelines are of vital importance., Relevance to Clinical Practice: The results of this study provide a useful resource to develop educational programmes for strengthening the SCC of nurses and the entire HPC team., (© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

(1) Background: The purpose of this study was to validate a Korean version of the disaster preparedness evaluation tool (DPET-K) for nurses and to verify its validity and reliability for use in community healthcare centers and hospitals in South Korea; (2) Methods: In total, 497 nurses (248 for exploratory factor analysis and 249 for confirmatory factor analysis) at public health centers, public health sub-centers, public health clinics, and general hospitals in Seoul and Gyeonggi, Chungcheong, and Gangwon Provinces participated in this study. The tool went through translation and back-translation, content validity verification, a pilot survey, and validity and reliability testing; (3) Results: The DPET-K had 28 items with five factors (disaster education and training, disaster knowledge and information, bioterrorism and emergency response, disaster response, and disaster evaluation). The Cronbach's α values for internal consistency were 0.766-0.953 for the five subscales of the DPET-K. A structural equation model was built through confirmatory factor analysis for goodness of fit (χ 2 /df = 2.193, SRMR = 0.060, RMSEA = 0.069, GFI = 0.831, CFI = 0.927, NFI = 0.875); (4) Conclusions: The DPET-K was confirmed to be a useful tool for assessing the disaster preparedness of nurses in Korea.

Living with a terminal illness, whether as a patient or as the family member of a patient, often involves spiritual challenges. The ability to ascertain and meet the spiritual needs of terminally ill patients and their loved ones is an essential part of providing compassionate and competent whole person care. This study aimed to adapt the original Spiritual Interests Related to Illness Tool (SpIRIT) for use in Korea (SpIRIT-K) and to assess its reliability and validity as a tool to determine the spiritual needs of terminally ill Korean patients and their caregivers. After translation-back-translation and content validity indexing, SpIRIT-K was administered to 106 terminally ill patients and 105 family caregivers in 20 sites across South Korea. SPSS and AMOS were used for evaluating validity and reliability. The 37-item SpIRIT-K consisted of 8 factors (subscales), with each subscale consisting of between 3 and 8 items. Evidence for structural and convergent validity was observed. Internal reliability of the overall scale was 0.95. The findings showed patients and family caregivers reported no significant difference in 7 of the 8 subscales, demonstrating known-groups validity. The rigorous process of establishing cross-cultural validity for this scale provided evidence supporting its validity and reliability. The findings suggest that SpIRIT-K is suitable for research and for clinical purposes in palliative care settings in South Korea. This development also allows for comparisons between Korean and North American cultures in terms of spiritual needs among terminally ill patients and their caregivers., Competing Interests: The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose., (Copyright © 2020 by The Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association. All rights reserved.)

Objective: To investigate the risk factors for BPD severity by gestational age (GA) and identify a way to reduce the incidence of moderate-to-severe BPD., Study Design: This was a retrospective cohort study of very-low-birth-weight-infants (VLBWIs) delivered at 24 to 28 weeks GA from Korean Neonatal Network registry between 2013 and 2016. BPD was defined using the National Institutes of Health criteria. Study populations were divided by GA and subdivided into no/mild BPD and moderate/severe BPD. The initial statuses of all infants, including those who died before BPD diagnosis and the maternal and neonatal factors of the live infants were compared. Statistical methods included descriptive statistics, comparative tests, and logistic regression., Results: Of 3,976 infants, 3,717 were included (24weeks, n = 456; 25 weeks, n = 650, 26 weeks, n = 742; 27 weeks, n = 836; 28 weeks, n = 1,033). The overall mortality rate was 18% and the rates by GA were 43%, 29%, 11%, and 6% in the 24-, 25-, 26-, 27-, 28-GA groups, respectively. Small for GA (SGA), treated patent ductus arteriosus (PDA), hypotension, and late-onset sepsis were significant risk factors for developing moderate/severe BPD in the 25 to 28-week GA groups in the multivariate analyses. However, for infants born at 24 weeks GA, there were no significant risk factors apart from initial resuscitation., Conclusions: Effective initial resuscitation was the most important factor for infants delivered at 24 weeks GA determining the severity of BPD. For infants delivered between 25 and 28 weeks, judicious care of SGA infants, aggressive treatment for PDA and hypotension, and intense efforts to decrease the sepsis rate are needed to reduce the development of moderate-to-severe BPD., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.