Construction of an assessment scale for thirst severity in critically ill patients and its reliability and validity

Objective: Developing a severity assessment scale for critically ill patients' thirst and conducting reliability and validity tests, aiming to provide healthcare professionals with a scientific and objective tool for assessing the level of thirst. Methods: Based on literature review and qualitative interviews, a pool of items was generated, and a preliminary scale was formed through two rounds of Delphi expert consultation. Convenience sampling was employed to select 178 ICU patients in a top-three hospital from May 2023 to October 2023 as the study subjects to examine the reliability and validity of the severity assessment scale for critically ill patients' thirst. Results: The developed severity assessment scale for critically ill patients' thirst consists of 8 evaluation items and 26 evaluation indicators. The agreement coefficients for two rounds of expert consultation were 100% and 92.6% for the positive coefficient, and the authority coefficients were .900 and .906. Kendall's concordance coefficients were .101 and .120 (all p < .001). The overall Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the scale was .827. The inter-rater reliability coefficient was .910. The Item-Content Validity Index (I-CVI) ranged from .800 to 1.000, and the Scale-Content Validity Index/Average (S-CVI/Ave) was .950. Conclusion: The critically ill patients' thirst assessment scale is reliable and valid and can be widely used in clinical practice.