Development and psychometric evaluation of the Feeling Safe During Surgery Scale.
Fanny Larsson, Åsa Engström, Ulrica Strömbäck and 1 others
PMID 34291891WHAT IT FOUND
The 13-item scale produced consistent scores from 203 patients under regional anaesthesia and was rated relevant by five experts.
It does not prove patients felt safe or that using it improves care.
Key findings
01Items 7, 10 and 12 were excluded, leaving 13 items with Cronbach's alpha 0.841.
02A two-factor solution was selected, and these two factors accounted for 52.581% of total variance.
03Five experts rated the scale's content validity as acceptable, with an average index of 0.88.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The reliability and construct validity analysis used only patients who had undergone hip or knee arthroplasties with regional anaesthesia, so it may not apply to other surgeries or anaesthesia types. Responses were homogeneous and item means were close to five, so the five-point scale may not detect differences and could reflect acquiescence bias. The factor solution was chosen manually after principal component analysis suggested four factors, and two retained items had low loadings. Content validity was rated by only five experts, and two items with low content validity scores were rephrased rather than removed. The study tested the questionnaire, not whether nurses using it improves patient safety or recovery.
Declared interests
No conflict of interest has been declared by the authors.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the 13-item scale as proof that patients felt safe or that using it improves care. The study tested questionnaire scores, and item means were close to five, which the paper notes may reflect acquiescence bias.