Empowering Parents of Australian Infants and Children in Hospital

Abstract

<jats:sec> <jats:title>Objectives:</jats:title> <jats:p>To translate, culturally adapt, and psychometrically test the EMpowerment of PArents in The Intensive Care-30 questionnaire in Australian pediatric critical care, neonatal, and pediatric ward settings.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Design:</jats:title> <jats:p>Cross-sectional, descriptive, multicenter study conducted in two phases; 1) translation and cultural adaptation and 2) validation of the EMpowerment of PArents in The Intensive Care-30 questionnaire.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Settings:</jats:title> <jats:p>Two Western Australian sites, the PICU and two pediatric wards of a children’s hospital and the neonatal unit of a women’s and newborn hospital.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Participants:</jats:title> <jats:p>Parents whose baby or child was admitted to the participating wards or units with a length of hospital stay greater than 24 hours.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Intervention:</jats:title> <jats:p>None.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Measurements and Main Results:</jats:title> <jats:p>Phase 1: A structured 10-step translation process adhered to international principles of good practice for translation and cultural adaptation of patient-reported outcomes. Thirty parents participated in cognitive debriefing. Phase 2: A total of 328 parents responded to the EMpowerment of PArents in The Intensive Care-30-AUS questionnaire. Reliability was sufficient (Cronbach α at domain level 0.70 –0.82, for each clinical area 0.56–0.86). Congruent validity was adequate between the domains and three general satisfaction items (<jats:italic toggle="yes">r</jats:italic> <jats:sub>s</jats:sub> 0.38–0.69). Nondifferential validity showed no significant effect size between three patient or parent demographic characteristics and the domains (Cohen’s <jats:italic toggle="yes">d</jats:italic> &lt; 0.36). Between the different clinical areas, significant differences in responses were found in all domains.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title>Conclusions:</jats:title> <jats:p>The translated and culturally adapted EMpowerment of PArents in The Intensive Care-30-AUS is a reliable and valid questionnaire to measure parent-reported outcomes in pediatric critical care, pediatric ward, and neonatal hospital settings. Using this questionnaire can provide a framework for a standardized quality improvement approach and identification of best practices across specialties, hospital services and for benchmarking similar health services worldwide.</jats:p> </jats:sec>