Development of Korea version of the Practice Environment Scale for Advanced Practice Registered Nurses

Purpose: To develop a Korean version of the practice environment scale that can verify the practice environment of advanced practice registered nurses (APRN) by verifying the validity and reliability of the Nurse practitioner's primary care organizational climate questionnaire developed by Poghosyan et al. Methods: After translation using a committee approach and an expert group's verification of the content validity, items were classified as 'professional visibility', 'APRN-administration relations', 'APRN-physician relations', 'independent practice and support' A total of 29 questionnaire items were developed for the four factors. Data were collected from 200 advanced practice registered nurses working at two advanced general hospitals and six general hospitals. Results: In the confirmatory factor analysis, CFI, TLI, and RMSR evaluation indices were appropriate except for RMSEA. Partial validity was shown in convergent validity, and discriminant validity. Exploratory factor analysis revealed that the questions were well organized with four factors. Cronbach's α of the whole instrument was .93. Conclusion: As a first attempt to measure the practice environment of the APRN in Korea, the results show that this questionnaire provides basic data for correct role setting and improvement of practice environment. This research will ultimately serve as a basis for cost-effective quality care.