Turkish Validity and Reliability Study of the Nurses' Ethical Dilemma for Physically Restrained Elderly Patients Scale

Objective: Within the Turkish cultural context, nurses experience ethical dilemmas related to respecting elderly patients’ needs, wishes, values, and decision-making processes, while balancing family expectations, autonomy, patient safety, and institutional responsibilities during physical restraint decisions. This study aimed to adapt the Nurses’ Ethical Dilemma for Physically Restrained Elderly Patients Scale into Turkish and to evaluate its psychometric properties in terms of validity and reliability.Methods: A methodological, descriptive, and correlational design was used. Data were collected from 167 nurses using a descriptive characteristics form and the adapted scale. Analyses included exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, item–total correlations, and test–retest reliability.Results: The Turkish version of the scale, consisting of four factors and 17 items, demonstrated strong psychometric validity comparable to the original version. The total explained variance was 65.09%, all factor loadings exceeded 0.30, and RMSEA was below 0.05. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.75 for the total scale and ranged from 0.81 to 0.93 for the subdimensions.Conclusion: The Turkish version of the Nurses’ Ethical Dilemma for Physically Restrained Elderly Patients Scale demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties and cultural relevance, indicating that it is a valid and reliable tool for assessing ethical dilemmas in geriatric nursing care, while cross-cultural comparison of subscale scores should be interpreted with caution.