Development and validation of a preoperative information assessment scale

Abstract

Background: Preoperative information provision is a strategy used by nurses to control elective surgical patients’ anxiety levels. A tool for assessing this information will improve the quality of nursing care. Objective: To develop and validate a preoperative information assessment scale. Methodology: Psychometric study. A Likert-type 15-item scale was developed based on a literature review and the researchers’ experience. The scale was applied to 200 patients undergoing elective surgery in the preoperative period. Construct validity was assessed through exploratory factor analysis, principal components method, Varimax orthogonal rotation. Results: The KMO measure (0.92) and Bartlett’s test of sphericity confirm the model’s suitability. Two factors were extracted with the exploratory factor analysis, explaining 53.48% of the total variance. Cronbach’s alpha for the total scale was 0.903. Conclusion: The final version of the scale has good psychometric properties and allows assessing the patient’s perception of the information received.