Design of psychometric assessment questionnaire to determine the causes of discomfort among patients admitted to the intensive care unit

Background: Particular circumstances in the intensive care unit have led the patients to experience significant levels of pain and discomfort. On the other hand, these patients cannot express their discomfort due to several reasons. Aim: to develop the causes of discomfort in the intensive care units. Methods: In order for assessing the causes of discomfort, the initial questionnaire was extracted with 60 items and its content validity was then confirmed by experts. Questionnaires were completed for 220 patients hospitalized in intensive care units of Imam Reza and Ghaem hospitals of Mashhad, in 1392. The exploratory factor analysis was used to determine the discomfort factors. The reliability coefficient of the questionnaire was applied by Cronbach’s alpha and approved by inter-raters agreement. Data analysis was performed with SPSS version 14. Results: Factorial analysis showed that the components of the 30-item questionnaire of discomfortfactors in the intensive care units was identified in 5 domains including: isolation and loneliness (7 questions), anxiety (6 factors), the ICU environment (6 factors), treatment (6 factors), and pathophysiologic factors (5 factors). The range of Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for sub-scales of the questionnaire of discomfort factors in the intensive care unit was between 0.65 and 0.85, and cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the whole tool was 0.86. Conclusion: the questionnaire of discomfort factors is designed to assist the nursing staff of the intensive care units to identify discomfort factors in patients and ultimately improve the quality of care for them. The psychometric characteristics of this questionnaire confirm its validity and reliability, so that it can be used to determine the source of discomfort among the ICU patients.