The Psychometry and Localization of the Patient Assessment and Discharge Checklist in the Post-Anesthesia Care Unit (SAMPE Checklist)

The correct transition in postoperative care, from the post-anesthesia care unit (PACU) to the general ward or even home discharge, is an essential step in the discharge of surgical patients. The present study was conducted with the aim of psychometrics and localization of the Persian version of the patient evaluation and discharge checklist in the post-anesthesia care unit.

This cross-sectional study was conducted in the paramedical faculty of Iran University of Medical Sciences in 2022. In this study, the psychometrics and localization of the Persian version of the patient assessment and discharge checklist in the post-anesthesia care unit (SAMPE checklist) were evaluated. The translation tool was implemented using the forward-backward method, and the clinical validation of the tool was done by determining face validity (qualitative) and content validity (content validity index). Also, to check the tool's reliability, the inter-rater reliability method was performed using the Kappa coefficient. SPSS version 26 software was used for statistical analysis.

The present research was conducted on 80 patients of the PACU with a mean age of 45 years (minimum = 18 years, maximum = 89 years). Patients were selected non-randomly (convenience samples) from the PACU and participated in the study after informing their consent. Demographic and anesthesia-surgery characteristics are provided in Table 1.Content validity was reported as 0.94 using CVI (Table 2). For eight items of the checklist, a CVI over 0.79 was reported, indicating the favorable content validity of all items (Table 2). The face validity of the SAMPE checklist was assessed qualitatively using the recovery nurses’ comments. The recovery nurses approved all the items regarding the items’ level of difficulty, appropriateness, and ambiguity; thus, no change was made to the items. In order to assess the reliability, the kappa coefficient was calculated, the value of which was 0.31-1, indicating the appropriateness of the tool’s reliability (Table 3).

The research findings show the tool's face validity, content validity, and appropriate reliability. Based on this, the psychometric and localized patient evaluation and discharge checklist in the post-anesthesia care unit (SAMPE checklist) in this research can be used to determine the readiness of patients for discharge from the PACU.