The Scale of Sacrifice for Patients During the COVID-19 Epidemic: A Scale Development Study

Disasters, by their very nature, cause great destruction and it takes great effort and effort to eliminate these destructions. The destructions experienced are not always equally distributed to the whole society and sectors. In addition to affecting the whole world after the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, its effects were felt most intensely on the health sector and its employees, and the health workers showed the greatest dedication and sacrifice to cope with this disaster. In this study, it is aimed to develop a valid and reliable scale in order to measure the sacrifices of healthcare workers who serve under severe conditions such as high-risk work, overtime hours, and compulsory service during the COVID-19 period. With the help of open-ended questions prepared for this purpose, online interviews were conducted with 9 healthcare professionals. The obtained qualitative data were transformed into measurable scale items and their internal reliability, criterion validity and factor structure were examined on a sample of 138 people. Participants were reached by convenience sampling method. According to the results of the factor analysis, it was found that the scale had a one-dimensional structure. As a result of factor analysis, two items were excluded because their factor loads were below 0.30. The nine-item scale explains 67% of the total variance. The Cronbach's Alpha value of the total scale was found to be 0.929. In conclusion, the findings obtained in this study show that the Patient Sacrifice Scale during the COVID-19 Epidemic is a valid and reliable scale whose psychometric properties have been empirically tested in a Turkish sample.