Validation of the Chinese Version of the Telehealth Attitudes Scale for Nurses: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background Telehealth overcomes temporal and spatial constraints, enabling remote disease monitoring and rehabilitation guidance for patients. Nurse-led telehealth services optimize resource allocation by significantly reducing non-essential hospital visits and readmissions, while providing personalized care and rehabilitation, thereby lowering the economic burden on patients. However, effective tools for assessing nurses' attitudes towards telehealth adoption remain lacking. Aim This study aimed to translate, culturally adapt, and validate the Nurses' Attitudes Towards the Use of Telehealth Scale (NATUTS) in mainland China. The validation assessed the scale's reliability and validity to evaluate nurses' current attitudes towards telehealth utilization and inform the future development of more accessible and diversified telehealth technologies. Methods Authorization was obtained from the original authors via email. The NATUTS underwent translation, back-translation, cultural adaptation, and pilot testing to form the Chinese version. Using convenience sampling, 452 nurses from tertiary hospitals in Hubei Province were recruited for psychometric validation. Results The Chinese NATUTS comprises 19 items across three dimensions: satisfaction, rejection, and development. The scale demonstrated good reliability (Cronbach’s α 0.893; subscales: 0.960, 0.843, 0.763; test-retest reliability = 0.879) and validity (I-CVI range = 0.778 ~ 1.00; S-CVI/UA = 0.789; S-CVI/Ave = 0.971). Confirmatory factor analysis indicated excellent model fit (χ²/df = 1.329, RMSEA = 0.040, GFI = 0.912, CFI = 0.976, NFI = 0.909). Conclusion The Chinese Nurses' Telehealth Attitudes Scale exhibits strong reliability and validity, making it an effective instrument for measuring nurses' attitudes towards telehealth technology adoption in China.