Background:

Spiritual issues are an important dimension of health care, but seldom addressed by professionals. Thus, a scale that assesses the presence and intensity of seven spiritual symptoms was developed.

Aim:

To validate the instrument in palliative care settings.

Material and Methods:

The spiritual symptoms scale was applied to 103 patients, aged 59 ± 17 years (58% women), admitted to hospice care in two centers located in Santiago. The reproducibility of the scale was evaluated in 33 patients and its internal consistency and liability in 70.

Results:

The Fleiss Kappa to assess reproducibility was 0.82 and the analysis of variance had a p of 0.94. Cronbach alpha to assess internal consistency was 0.74.

Conclusions:

The scale renders similar results when applied by different evaluators and has a good liability. Therefore, it can be a reliable instrument to assess spiritual symptoms in palliative care settings. Further studies would be needed to verify its utility in other settings.

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