Abstract
Nursing's continued focus on caring for physical aspects of patients' bodies underscores the importance of bodywork and shows nursing's privileged, professional access to patients. This instrument development study presents the first phases of a new instrument. It established a conceptual definition of nursing's bodywork and initial psychometric properties of the Nursing Bodywork Instrument. Literature sources generated codes and clusters for item development. Literature‐based and expert content validity were demonstrated. A pilot study tested nurses' (N = 53) agreement with draft items. The highest‐ranked items confirmed nurses' bodywork and reliance on technological devices when giving direct patient care. Known groups validity testing by groups' years as a nurse did not differ statistically. Internal consistency reliability was 0.98 on the 128‐item instrument, pointing to the need for future reduction. Inter‐item correlations suggested that factor analysis with a large sample size might generate domains descriptive of nursing's bodywork. A total of 125 items resulted from item analysis and subsequent item revision. All items were matched with clusters; for example, technologic device management, physical comfort facilitation, skin/wound management, self‐care facilitation, and respiratory management include some item clusters.