Development and Validation of a Safety Scale Perceived by the Witness of Prehospital Emergency Care

Abstract

Objective The aim of the study was to design and validate a new tool to measure the security perceived by witnesses of patient care and hospital transfers, after requesting urgent assistance via the “061” phone number. Methods This is a descriptive observational, cross-sectional, design, and validation study of a scale conducted by telephone interview. Witnesses of urgent assistance and transfers by prehospital emergency medical services in the province of Cadiz, in the south of Spain, were the subjects of study. A questionnaire was designed after focus groups with patients, witnesses, and professionals. It consisted of 10 items, with Likert-type answers, and a range of 0 to 50 points. In addition to basic criteria (frequency of endorsement and ability to discriminate between groups), their validity (content and construct) and reliability (stability and homogeneity) were evaluated. Stability was evaluated by test-retest and homogeneity by means of two properties: internal consistency of items (corrected item-scale correlation coefficient) and internal consistency of the scale (Cronbach α coefficient). Results A total of 849 questionnaires were obtained, with scores between 0 and 50 points, with an average of 47.31 (median of 50). The exploratory factor analysis detected a component that explained 61.1% of the total variance. The intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.933 with 95% confidence interval between 0.900 and 0.954. The corrected item-scale correlation coefficient was greater than 0.596, and the Cronbach α coefficient was 0.927 (95% confidence interval, 0.919–0.934). Conclusions The ESPT10 Witness Perceived Safety Scale is valid and reliable for quantifying the safety perception of witnesses of emergency assistance and transfers.

Feeling safe or unsafe in prehospital emergency care: A qualitative study of the experiences of patients, carers and healthcare professionals

“…The results suggest that most of the patients in this study taken to hospital after requesting urgent prehospital care felt safe or very safe, which is consistent with the results of previous studies (Péculo‐Carrasco et al, 2013, 2019), as well as with the biannual satisfaction survey conducted by the prehospital emergencies service in Andalusia among assisted patients (Public Company for Health Emergencies, 2018). Defining the perception of safety was not easy for either patients or professionals.…”

“…Several studies following a quantitative methodology with questionnaires and scales (González‐Cabrera et al, 2014; Mira et al, 2009; Péculo‐Carrasco et al, 2013, 2019), and a qualitative methodology with focus group techniques and semi‐structured interviews (Granström et al, 2019; Lovink et al, 2015; Mollon, 2014; Oliveira Arruda et al, 2017; Prieto Rodríguez et al, 2008) have been published in recent years that aim to discover the opinions, perceptions and experiences of patients regarding clinical safety in different healthcare settings. Comparing the results of these studies with research in which healthcare professionals themselves revealed their perceptions of safety, the responses were seen to differ.…”

Factors influencing the perception of feeling safe in pre‐hospital emergency care: A mixed‐methods systematic review

“…Data were collected by means of interviews (Ahl & Nyström, 2012; Jepsen et al, 2019; Lundqvist et al, 2021; Venesoja et al, 2020), semi‐structured interviews (Kingswell et al, 2015; Magnusson & Granskar, 2005) and focus groups (Péculo‐Carrasco et al, 2020). The three articles with a quantitative methodology followed a cross‐sectional descriptive observational design (Péculo‐Carrasco et al, 2013, 2021; Salminen‐Tuomaala et al, 2018), with sample sizes between 169 and 1011 subjects. In two of these, scales were validated that measure perceived safety in pre‐hospital emergencies (Péculo‐Carrasco et al, 2013, 2021).…”

“…Pre‐hospital emergencies were the most frequent context, either with a hospital transfer (Ahl & Nyström, 2012; Jepsen et al, 2019; Péculo‐Carrasco et al, 2013, 2021; Péculo‐Carrasco et al, 2020; Venesoja et al, 2020) or without (Salminen‐Tuomaala et al, 2018). The setting for the three remaining articles was the transfer of patients between hospitals (Kingswell et al, 2015; Lundqvist et al, 2021; Magnusson & Granskar, 2005).…”

Development and Validation of a Rating Scale of Pain Expression during Childbirth (ESVADOPA)

“…The sample of 55 women on whom we validated the scale was considered sufficient given the number of births at the hospital where the study was conducted. Other studies have validated scales with a similar or even smaller numbers of participants [1,50,51].…”