Florence Nightingale School of Nursing, Istanbul University, Istanbul, Turkey.
Eur J Oncol Nurs. 2011 Feb;15(1):3-11. doi: 10.1016/j.ejon.2009.10.010. Epub 2009 Nov 26.
Treatment-related side effects have an adverse impact on the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. This study is a description of the validity and responsiveness demonstrated by a new cancer and cancer treatment-specific symptom scale--the Nightingale Symptom Assessment Scale (N-SAS)--which was developed and validated to address the QoL of Turkish cancer patients.
The comprehensiveness and clarity of the scale was assessed using 10 patients and pilot testing was carried out with 179 patients. A sample of 374 cancer patients who had received chemotherapy participated in the main study. Descriptive statistics were calculated and comparative tests and factor analysis were performed.
The internal reliability of N-SAS was examined and the validity of this scale was determined by correlation with FACT-G. The scale showed high internal reliability, Cronbach's α for the subscales varied between 0.81 and 0.87 and was 0.93 for the tool. Longitudinal analyses showed that changes in N-SAS scores were strongly correlated with changes in FACT-G. Multivariate analysis revealed that having a metastatic cancer diagnosis, having a low level of income, receiving taxane-based therapy and being a woman were the most important predictive factors for the well-being of the cancer patients in this study.
The high correlation with the FACT-G suggests that the new scale is a valid instrument that can be used to evaluate the effect of antineoplastic therapies on a cancer patient's QoL and can help guide nursing care as well as track the improvement of patients' HRQoL.
治疗相关的副作用会对接受化疗的癌症患者的健康相关生活质量（HRQoL）产生负面影响。本研究描述了一种新的癌症和癌症治疗特异性症状量表——Nightingale 症状评估量表（N-SAS）的有效性和反应性，该量表是为满足土耳其癌症患者的生活质量而开发和验证的。
通过 10 名患者评估了量表的全面性和清晰度，并对 179 名患者进行了试点测试。374 名接受化疗的癌症患者参加了主要研究。计算了描述性统计数据，并进行了比较测试和因子分析。
检查了 N-SAS 的内部可靠性，并通过与 FACT-G 的相关性确定了该量表的有效性。该量表显示出较高的内部可靠性，子量表的 Cronbach's α 值在 0.81 到 0.87 之间，工具的 Cronbach's α 值为 0.93。纵向分析表明，N-SAS 评分的变化与 FACT-G 的变化密切相关。多变量分析显示，转移性癌症诊断、收入水平低、接受紫杉烷类药物治疗和女性是本研究中癌症患者幸福感的最重要预测因素。
与 FACT-G 的高度相关性表明，新量表是一种有效的工具，可用于评估抗肿瘤治疗对癌症患者生活质量的影响，并有助于指导护理以及跟踪患者 HRQoL 的改善。
