Obstetrical nurses' attitude toward fetal monitoring.

A 24-item tool, using a Likert attitudinal scale, was developed to measure labor and delivery nurses' attitudes toward fetal monitoring and was administered to 124 nurses. For each of the 24 attitude statements, cumulative responses were over 50% positive at least. Fifty-two percent of the nurses felt that routine continuous monitoring of all labor patients would be ideal, and 88% felt that the fetal surveillance achieved by monitoring cannot be matched by intermittent auscultation.