Development and validation of the Geriatric In-hospital Nursing Care Questionnaire.

OBJECTIVES

To develop a questionnaire, the Geriatric In-hospital Nursing Care Questionnaire (GerINCQ), to measure, in an integrated way, the care that older adults receive in the hospital and nurses' attitudes toward and perceptions about caring for older adults.

DESIGN

Questionnaire development.

SETTING

Twelve university and teaching hospitals.

PARTICIPANTS

Thirteen experienced geriatric nurses and three geriatricians from 12 hospitals evaluated an initial version of the questionnaire. Two hundred seventy-one nurses, primarily registered nurses from 11 geriatric, medical, and surgical departments in six hospitals, validated the final questionnaire.

MEASUREMENTS

Items from two published instruments were extracted for use in the questionnaire. Content validity was confirmed using the Delphi technique with an expert panel. Internal consistency was measured by calculating Cronbach alpha; intrarater reliability was measured using test-retest correlations and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs); differences between hospital departments were analyzed using analysis of variance. Sensitivity to detect before-and-after changes with implementation of a geriatric care program was determined using the Student t-test.

RESULTS

Consensus was reached after three Delphi rounds. The GerINCQ is a self-administered questionnaire to be filled out by hospital nurses that comprises five subscales with 67 items. It has good content validity (each item content validity index >0.9) and good internal consistency (Cronbach alpha = 0.86). Intrarater reliability revealed high test-retest results (ICC = 0.87). The questionnaire detected significant differences between nurses in three types of hospital departments (medical, surgical, and geriatric (P < .01). The GerINCQ was sensitive to changes after an educational program (P < .02) and had a large effect size (0.5).

CONCLUSION

The GerINCQ is a reliable and valid tool and is sensitive to change over time. It is clinically relevant because it provides a quantitative measure of hospital nurses' geriatric practices, attitudes, and perceptions. Moreover, the GerINCQ is suitable for monitoring progress after implementation of geriatric improvement programs.