[Validation of the perceived safety scale for patients transported to hospital after an outpatient emergency].

Objective: To design and validate a new tool to measure the perceived safety of patients who are transported to hospital after requesting urgent health care using the telephone number "061".
Methods: A multicentre, observational, descriptive and cross-sectional study to validate the score obtained using a telephone interview. The patients subject to study were those who were transported to the hospital after requesting urgent health care using the telephone number "061". The eight provincial services of the Public Emergency Medical Services Company of Andalusia participated. The data were collected from January to June of 2010. In addition to the basic criteria of the validation of the survey (endorsement frequency and discrimination ability between groups), an assessment was made of validity (validity of content and validity of construct or concept) and reliability (stability and homogeneity). The Retest-Test technique was used to assess stability, whereas the homogeneity was examined using two properties: internal consistency of its items (correlation coefficient checked item-scale) and internal consistency of the scale (Cronbach's Alpha coefficient).
Results: A total of 1011 questionnaires were obtained after 7538 phone calls (13.4%). The total scale score fluctuated between 0 and 80 points, with a mean of 73.95 (SD: 9.607), and a median of 79. The exploratory factor analysis detected two components that explained 62.3% of the total variance. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was 0.814 (95% CI: 0.725-0.874). The correlation coefficient checked item- scale to examine the internal consistency of its items was more than 0.625. The Cronbach's Alpha coefficient was 0.941 for the internal consistency of the scale.
Conclusion: The Perceived Safety Survey ESP16 is a valid and reliable scale that quantified patients' perception of safety after being assisted and transported to the hospital.
(Copyright © 2012 SECA. Published by Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved.)