Content validation of the symptom control outcome for heart failure patients in palliative care

Abstract

Objectives: To estimate the content validity of the Symptom Control nursing outcome for heart failure patients in palliative care and to analyze the influence of experts’ experience in the judgment of the relevance of indicators. Methods: A methodological study conducted in São Paulo in 2018, with an adaptation of Fehring’s validation model. The relevance of the 11 outcome indicators was assessed by 19 experts by means of an electronically submitted survey. The influence of the experts’ experience on judgment was analyzed by the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test and by Kendall’s Tau correlation. Results: The indicators were considered pertinent; with 54.5% classified as critical. There was no association between the weighted means of the indicators and the experts’ experience. Conclusions: The indicators analyzed are relevant for the evaluation of the Symptom Control outcome in this group of patients. The experts’ judgment was not influenced by their area of clinical experience or by their experience with the Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC).