Ease of care with patient controlled analgesia systems: questionnaire development and validation.
OBJECTIVE
This paper is a report of the development and validation of two questionnaires assessing ease of caring for patients receiving patient controlled analgesia from the perspectives of nurses and physical therapists.


BACKGROUND
While studies have assessed patient satisfaction with and preference for patient controlled analgesia modalities, no instruments have been developed to assess the ease of providing care (ease of care) for patients receiving patient controlled analgesia from nurses' and physical therapists' perspectives.


METHODS
Nurses and physical therapists participated in focus groups during 2003 to identify concepts associated with caring for patients receiving intravenous patient controlled analgesia. Based on these discussions, items were developed and included in draft questionnaires. Content validity of draft questionnaires was assessed, and final questionnaires were developed. Psychometric properties of the final questionnaires were assessed using data from 79 nurses and 80 physical therapists from two clinical trials conducted during 2004 and 2005 to compare the efficacy and safety of two modalities of patient controlled analgesia.


RESULTS
The Nurse and Physical Therapist Ease of Care Questionnaires had 22 items addressing three aspects of patient care: time-efficiency (time-consuming subscale), ease of use/convenience (bothersome subscale), and satisfaction (satisfaction subscale). All subscales on both questionnaires demonstrated evidence of internal consistency reliability, and subscale-to-subscale correlations suggested that the time-consuming and bothersome subscales contribute equally to overall ease of care. The subscales were statistically significantly correlated with clinical measures.


CONCLUSIONS
These instruments may be valuable for assessing the impact of patient controlled analgesia modalities on patient care for these healthcare providers.
United BioSource Corporation, Bethesda, Maryland, USA. gale.harding@unitedbiosource.com
Gale
G
Harding
Sue
S
Vallow
Nancy K
NK
Leidy
William
W
Olson
David J
DJ
Hewitt
Rosemary
R
Polomano
Winnie W
WW
Nelson
Jeff R
JR
Schein
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D016058:Analgesia, Patient-Controlled / Q000451:nursing; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D004526:Efficiency; D017144:Focus Groups; D006801:Humans; D007262:Infusions, Intravenous; D009726:Nurses; D010149:Postoperative Pain / Q000451:nursing / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000534:rehabilitation; D026761:Physical Therapy Specialty; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014481:United States; D016526:Workload