CONTENT VALIDITY OF THE PAIN AND NURSING CARE QUALITY (PANCQ) SURVEY.

PAIN management; MEDICAL quality control; ONCOLOGY nursing; HEALTH outcome assessment; PATIENT satisfaction

Research to document the impact of oncology nurses on patient outcomes, such as pain, is an ONS priority. A significant barrier to such research is the inability to effectively measure the quality of nursing care. The most common approach, measures of patient satisfaction, tend to be global, e.g. overall satisfaction with nursing care and are usually temporally framed within the entire hospital stay. The purpose of this study was to establish the content validity of the PaNCQ survey. The ultimate goal is to develop a simple measure of the quality of nursing care related to pain management at the end of a nursing care shift in the acute care setting. This report summarizes developmental and judgmental phases of examining content validity of the PaNCQ. In the developmental phase, qualitative analysis of data from 34 patient interviews yielded an item pool (n=102) reflecting concepts identified by cancer patients as important to pain management quality of care: being treated right, safety net, efficacy of pain management, and partnership with the interdisciplinary team. Members of the research team individually rated the relevance of each item and collectively agreed to delete 19 items. PaNCQ Version 3, consisting of 88 items, was then reviewed by nine national pain management and nursing care quality experts. We used a 4-option rating scale (ranging from not relevant to relevant and succinct). Applying published and accepted criteria, we established content validity beyond the .05 level of significance if at least 8 of 9 experts agreed the item was relevant but needed minor alteration or if the item was very relevant and succinct. We took a liberal approach, meaning fewer items would be deleted. Based on the expert panel survey items were deleted, reworded, and added; 75 items remain which will now be tested systematically using cognitive interviewing and then in a large multi-site sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]