Abstract: Objective: To understand the awareness and importance of patient privacy protection by operating room nurses though developing a patient privacy protection scale. Methods: Through literature review and group meeting, an initial scale for the evaluation of patient privacy protection perception and behavior by operating room nurses was made. Delphi expert consultation method was used to construct the formal scale. Through item distributed, correlation analysis, internal consistency analysis, and factor analysis to screen items of the scale, and conduct reliability and validity tests. Results: The Cronbach's α coefficient of the scale was 0.954, the half reliability was 0.898, and test-retest reliability was 0.997. The content validity index (S-CVI) of the scale was 0.95. Three common factors were extracted through principal component factor analysis. The final formal scale includes 18 items in 3 dimensions. Conclusion: The scale has good reliability and validity, which can provide a quantifiable basis for evaluating the privacy protection level of nurses in operating room.

Key words: operating room nurses; privacy; patient privacy protection; cognitive level; scale