Barriers to enteral feeding of critically ill adults in Korea.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Evaluating barriers to provision of enteral nutrition in intensive care units and planning an appropriate intervention can improve nutritional nursing practice in these units. This study aimed to develop a Korean version of the Barriers to Enterally Feeding Critically Ill Patients Questionnaire (BEFIP-K) and to explore the barriers to enteral feeding of critically ill patients in Korea.

METHODS AND STUDY DESIGN

The 24- item BEFIP-K was developed according to the process laid down by the World Health Organization. Its psychometric properties were assessed, including acceptability; validity, which included content validity and construct validity; and reliability, which consisted of internal consistency and item-total correlation, using data from 207 critical care nurses in four tertiary hospitals in South Korea.

RESULTS

The calculated content validity indices for each item were from 0.88 to 1.00. As for the exploratory factor analysis, 24 items were loaded on five domains, accounting for 56.9% of the total variance. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the total scale was 0.913 and the coefficients for item-total correlation analyses ranged from 0.469 to 0.694. The total BEFIP-K score was 32.1, with a range from 18.5 to 45.4.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings support that the BEFIP-K is a feasible, valid instrument for assessing barriers to provision of enteral nutrition.