With the in-depth research of care in the field of nursing, the importance of self-care in nurses has gradually been highlighted. In recent years, a series of researches on self-care of nurses were conducted at home and abroad. This paper included the existing literatures and reviewed the concept, connotation, theoretical basis as well as instruments along with evaluating the current situation of self-care in nurses so as to provide a reference for the further research.

Objective:To develop a Nurses' Self-Care Scale so as to provide an effective and reliable tool for evaluating Nurses' Self-Care Scale ability.Methods:A draft of the scale was developed through literature review, expert consultation and small sample pre-experiment. By convenience sampling method, a total of 364 nurses from 3 ClassⅢ Grade A hospitals in Beijing from April to June 2019 were selected for questionnaire survey. The scale was revised and its reliability and validity were evaluated.Results:A total of 5 dimensions and 36 items were finally contained in the Nurses' Self-Care Scale. A total of 5 common factors were generated by exploratory factor analysis, namely the generation of self-care consciousness, the mastery of self-care knowledge, the implementation of healthy lifestyle, the satisfaction of inner self and the acceptance of professional self, and the contribution rate of cumulative variance was 72.523%. The r value of Pearson linear correlation analysis among the scores in 5 dimensions was from 0.497 to 0.836 ( P<0.05) , and the r value of the scores in each dimension and the total score of the scale was from 0.705 to 0.934 ( P<0.05) . The Cronbach's α coefficient of the total scale was 0.977, and the Cronbach's α coefficient of the five dimensions was from 0.890 to 0.975. Conclusions:The Nurses' Self-Care Scale has good reliability and validity, which can be used as a tool to evaluate the level of nurses' self-care.