Development and validation of the Pressure Injury Prevention Barriers questionnaire in hospital nurses in Spain

OBJECTIVE: To develop and validate a new questionnaire to measure the nurses’ perceptions of the barriers towards the prevention of pressure injuries (PIs) at hospitals. DESIGN: Validation study with mixed methods. SETTING: Four university hospitals in southern Spain. PARTICIPANTS: The questionnaire was developed based on a literature review. A panel of 14 wound care experts rated the content validity. A sample of 438 nurses (registered nurses and assistant nurses) participated in the survey. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The psychometric properties of the Pressure Injury Prevention Barriers (PIPB) questionnaire evaluated were: content validity, internal consistency reliability and construct validity. RESULTS: The final version of the questionnaire has 25 items grouped into four factors (management and organisation, motivation and priority, knowledge, and staff and collaboration). The confirmatory factor analysis showed good fit and error indices for the model (Comparative Fit Index=0.92, root mean square error of approximation=0.074). Cronbach’s alpha was 0.90 (overall), and 0.89 (factor 1), 0.75 (factor 2), 0.72 (factor 3) and 0.45 (factor 4). Construct validity was good, demonstrated by the expected association with the scores on patient safety culture and on considering PIs as an adverse effect of hospital stay, but not with attitude score. CONCLUSION: The PIPB questionnaire is an instrument useful for measuring nurses’ perceptions of the barriers to PIs prevention. The initial evidence shows that the questionnaire has good content validity, internal consistency and adequate construct validity. Relevance and comprehensiveness need to be assessed in further studies. It can be used both in research and in the evaluation of clinical settings to implementation of PIs preventive programmes in hospitals.