Attitude of nurses towards older patients: Content validation of the Dutch 'Older Patients in Acute Care Survey'

Abstract

ENGLISH ABSTRACT Title; Attitude of nurses towards older patients; Content validation of the Dutch 'Older Patients in Acute Care Survey'. Background; Worldwide the population of older people with multimorbidity rises and more nurses are confronted with them. However, several nurses have a negative attitude towards older people which makes insight in attitude necessary. 'Older Patients in Acute Care Survey' (OPACS) measures nurses' attitudes towards older patients and has good content validity and reliability in U.S. and Australia, however, in the Netherlands is not any validated and reliable scale known. Aim and research question; The aim was to contain a validated and reliable measurement scale in the Netherlands, which measures the attitude of nurses toward older patients. The research question was: What is the content validity of the Dutch OPACS in a hospital setting? Design; Descriptive clinimetric study with cross-sectional design. Method; OPACS was examined in a three-step process: forward-backward translation of OPACS; testing translation with a pilot among five nurses; testing interrater reliability and content validity of OPACS using ten experts. Results; Scale-Content Validity Index is <0.90 for the entire scale as well as for section A and section B. The average of clarity of wording and appropriateness for measuring attitude is respectively 89.20% and 75.55%. The interrater reliability is k≤0.30. Conclusion; OPACS has good clarity of wording and is appropriate for measuring attitude. The degree of relevance and interrater reliability is low, which makes the current Dutch version of OPACS not ready for use. Recommendations; Content of OPACS should be refined by removing items who were not meeting criteria of content validity whereby further clinimetric research is necessary. Relevance to clinical practice; It is important to work with validated measurement scales. This study gives direction to further improve OPACS.