Validating a questionnaire - prehospital preparedness for pediatric trauma patients.

In recent decades, prehospital emergency care has undergone extensive development. Today, prehospital emergency nurses (PENs) are well trained and provide advanced care to patients of all ages. Caring for pediatric trauma patients is considered to be particularly demanding. However, in Sweden and internationally, there is a lack of research regarding PENs' preparedness for caring for pediatric trauma patients.

OBJECTIVE: The development and testing of a questionnaire on self-reported preparedness among PENs caring for pediatric trauma patients in a prehospital emergency setting.

METHODS: Questionnaire development included face and content validity tests resulting in 38 questions. Eighteen of these questions were analyzed by test-retest. The content of the questionnaire was statistically analyzed.

RESULTS: Fifteen questions were considered valid after reliability and validity tests. Three questions did not fulfill the stability criteria. The content analyses show a low degree of experience with pediatric trauma patients and half of the participants reported stress symptoms when responding to such alarms.

CONCLUSION: The questionnaire assessing PENs preparedness caring for pediatric trauma patients in Sweden is considered to be suitable for research and clinical practice to improve the care of pediatric trauma patients and the health of PENs, although further testing of the questionnaire is required.